Genesis of a profession: towards professional status for internal auditing

Reviews the success of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) in enhancing the professional status of both the discipline of internal auditing and the IIA itself. The IIA has established the paraphernalia of a formal professional framework but several factors appear to hold back the professional “project”, the most important of which is the absence of monopolistic control over the discipline. The IIA faces two options for the future. It may wish to proceed further along the path of creating a formal professional framework. Alternatively, the IIA in its current form may be ideally positioned for a new, post‐professional world for which traditional, antiquated professional institutions seem ill equipped.