In accordance with the standards of the National Registry of CPE Sponsors, CPE credits will be granted based on a 50-minute hour.
1st Session – Ethical Decision Making (100 minutes)
Cynthia Cooper will share her personal experiences at WorldCom as well as important lessons learned from some of the most significant 21st century corporate failures. Ms. Cooper will also provide practical strategies and tips to build a healthy speak-up culture and achieve long-term sustainable success. She will discuss:
Unraveling the WorldCom fraud and lessons learned
Common threads and root causes of recent public and private sector fraud scandals
How we can work smarter to prevent frauds and detect them more quickly
Fraud and the psychology of human behavior
The keys to building a healthy speak-up culture
What every auditor should know about whistleblowing
10 steps to navigate ethical dilemmas and make the right choices
2nd Session – Implementing an Effective Fraud Prevention & Detection Program (50 minutes)
Title: Fraud is some other organization’s problem, not mine, right?
Many auditors think that fraud is some other organization’s problem. They maintain internal dialogs like “we’ve got a great culture, so fraud’s not something we need to worry about, or with all the demands on our internal audit team we don’t need to focus resources on fraud, do we?”
Join the discussion about key components of a fraud prevention program, such as ethical culture, internal controls, and risk assessments and how internal audit can promote the development of a fraud aware culture across their organization. Learn now internal auditors can integrate fraud detection methods into their existing methodology and how tools like data analytics can help detect fraud in the audits you are already performing.
Our speakers will share case studies and practical tips on integrating fraud prevention into business processes, how internal auditors can integrate fraud detection methods into their existing methodologies, and how technology can enhance detection. The importance of training and awareness programs to foster a vigilant culture will be highlighted.
After this session, you'll be able to:
Engage with leaders in your organization to increase fraud awareness across your organization
Complete a fraud risk assessment for your organization
Incorporate anti-fraud measures into your existing audit methodology
Speaker Bio
Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom Whistleblower
Cynthia Cooper is an internationally recognized speaker, consultant, executive coach and best-selling author. Cynthia speaks on a broad array of topics including ethics, leadership, strategy, avoiding the pitfalls of failure, critical lessons of the 21st century scandals, how to assess and transform culture, GRC and ESG best practices, and strategies to prevent frauds and detect them more quickly.
Cynthia has a passion for speaking to students. She has donated all of the profits from her book Extraordinary Circumstances to support ethics education for high-school and university students. Cynthia has served on advisory boards for numerous universities including Lehigh University, Louisiana State University, the University of Alabama and Mississippi State University. She also served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy Center for the Public Trust, a nonprofit organization that promotes ethics and leadership. She served as Chair of the Board of Regents for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the world’s largest anti-fraud organization, and as a member of the Standing Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in Washington DC, a nonprofit authorized by Congress to protect investors by providing oversight to public company audits.
Cynthia was previously one of TIME magazine’s Persons of the Year and in 2020 she was included in 100 Women of the year, TIME’s list of the most influential women of the last 100 years. Along with the late Senator Sarbanes and Representative Oxley, Cynthia is a recipient of the Maria and Sidney E. Rolfe Award for her contributions to educating the public about economics, business and finance. Cynthia was featured as one of twenty-five influential working mothers in Working Mother and earned the distinction of being the first woman to receive the American Accounting Association’s Accounting Exemplar Award and to be inducted into the AICPA Business and Industry Hall of Fame. In addition, Cynthia was an inaugural inductee in the Institute of Internal Auditors American Hall of Distinguished Audit Practitioners.
Cynthia previously served as Chief Audit Executive at WorldCom and continued to serve in that role with MCI, where she helped to move the company forward and successfully emerge from bankruptcy. Cynthia began her career in public accounting and previously worked in Atlanta, Georgia for Price Waterhouse and Deloitte and Touche.
Speaker Bio
Grant Ostler,CIA, CPA, Industry Principal, Workiva
Grant Ostler, CIA, CPA is an Industry Principal at Workiva and has more than 35 years of experience primarily in the disciplines of auditing, enterprise risk management, and process improvement. He served as Chief Audit Executive for almost two decades for entities ranging from Fortune 500 companies to pre-IPO companies including building internal audit functions from scratch and leading the implementation of SOX 404 compliance programs for three companies.
Mr. Ostler is an active member of the Twin Cities Chapter of the IIA where he currently serves as a member of the CAE Committee and has held numerous leadership positions including Chapter President over the past two decades.
Mr. Ostler is a frequent presenter for the IIA including sessions at the following IIA conferences:
General Audit Management (GAM), IIA International, IIA / ISACA GRC, IIA SARA / ESG, IIA Cybersecurity
.pngEthical Decision Making & 
