Internal audit’s role in ESG reporting
Conversations and focus on sustainability, typically grouped into environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, are quickly evolving — from activist investor groups and inquisitive regulators pushing for change to governing bodies and C-suite executives struggling to understand and embrace the concept. At the forefront of this new risk area is pressure for organizations to make public commitments to sustainability and provide routine updates to ESG-related strategies, goals, and metrics that are accurate and relevant. However, ESG reporting is still immature, and there is not a lot of definitive guidance for organizations in this space. For example, there is no single standard for what should be reported.
What is clear is that strong governance over ESG — as with effective governance overall — requires alignment among the principal players as outlined in The Internal Institute of Auditors (IIA) Three Lines Model. As with any risk area, internal audit should be well-positioned to support the governing body and management with objective assurance, insights, and advice on ESG matters.
Embarking on the ESG journey
Efforts to mitigate the accelerating effects of climate change and address perceived historical social inequities are two powerful issues driving change globally. These movements have enhanced awareness of how all organizations impact, influence, and interact with society and the environment.
They also have spurred organizations to better recognize and manage ESG risks (i.e., risks associated with how organizations operate in respect to their impact on the world around them). This broad risk category includes areas that are dynamic and often driven by factors that can be difficult to measure objectively.
Still, there is growing urgency for organizations to understand and manage ESG risks, particularly as investors and regulators focus on organizations producing high-quality reporting on sustainability efforts. What’s more, that pressure is being reflected increasingly in executive performance as more organizations tie incentive compensation metrics to ESG goals.
As ESG reporting becomes increasingly common, it should be treated with the same care as financial reporting. Organizations need to recognize that ESG reporting must be built on a strategically crafted system of internal controls and accurately reflect how an organization’s ESG efforts relate to each other, the organization’s finances, and value creation.
Internal audit can and should play a significant role in an organization’s ESG journey. It can add value in an advisory capacity by helping to identify and establish a functional ESG control environment. It also can offer critical assurance support by providing an independent and objective review of the effectiveness of ESG risk assessments, responses, and controls.
Source: Adapted from https://na.theiia.org/about-ia/PublicDocuments/WhitePaper-Internal-Audits-Role-in-ESG-Reporting.pdf
READ TEXT II AND ANSWER THE QUESTION.
READ TEXT I AND ANSWER THE QUESTION.
Here’s why we’ll never be able to build a brain in a computer
It’s easy to equate brains and computers – they’re both thinking machines, after all. But the comparison doesn’t really stand up to closer inspection, as Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett reveals.
People often describe the brain as a computer, as if neurons are like hardware and the mind is software. But this metaphor is deeply flawed.
A computer is built from static parts, whereas your brain constantly rewires itself as you age and learn. A computer stores information in files that are retrieved exactly, but brains don’t store information in any literal sense. Your memory is a constant construction of electrical pulses and swirling chemicals, and the same remembrance can be reassembled in different ways at different times.
Brains also do something critical that computers today can’t. A computer can be trained with thousands of photographs to recognise a dandelion as a plant with green leaves and yellow petals. You, however, can look at a dandelion and understand that in different situations it belongs to different categories. A dandelion in your vegetable garden is a weed, but in a bouquet from your child it’s a delightful flower. A dandelion in a salad is food, but people also consume dandelions as herbal medicine.
In other words, your brain effortlessly categorises objects by their function, not just their physical form. Some scientists believe that this incredible ability of the brain, called ad hoc category construction, may be fundamental to the way brains work.
Also, unlike a computer, your brain isn’t a bunch of parts in an empty case. Your brain inhabits a body, a complex web of systems that include over 600 muscles in motion, internal organs, a heart that pumps 7,500 litres of blood per day, and dozens of hormones and other chemicals, all of which must be coordinated, continually, to digest food, excrete waste, provide energy and fight illness.[…]
If we want a computer that thinks, feels, sees or acts like us, it must regulate a body – or something like a body – with a complex collection of systems that it must keep in balance to continue operating, and with sensations to keep that regulation in check. Today’s computers don’t work this way, but perhaps some engineers can come up with something that’s enough like a body to provide this necessary ingredient.
For now, ‘brain as computer’ remains just a metaphor. Metaphors can be wonderful for explaining complex topics in simple terms, but they fail when people treat the metaphor as an explanation. Metaphors provide the illusion of knowledge.
(Adapted from https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/can-we-build-brain-computer/ Published: 24th October, 2021, retrieved on February 9th, 2022)
The title of the text implies that the author will:
Based on Text I, mark the statements below as true (T) or false (F).
( ) The “spray-and-pray” business model belongs to a late period in the history of ransomware.
( ) The analysis indicates that cybercrime is far from mushrooming.
( ) The text argues that solutions to cybercrime can be reached in a jiffy.
The statements are, respectively,
Here’s why we’ll never be able to build a brain in a computer
It’s easy to equate brains and computers – they’re both thinking machines, after all. But the comparison doesn’t really stand up to closer inspection, as Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett reveals.
People often describe the brain as a computer, as if neurons are like hardware and the mind is software. But this metaphor is deeply flawed.
A computer is built from static parts, whereas your brain constantly rewires itself as you age and learn. A computer stores information in files that are retrieved exactly, but brains don’t store information in any literal sense. Your memory is a constant construction of electrical pulses and swirling chemicals, and the same remembrance can be reassembled in different ways at different times.
Brains also do something critical that computers today can’t. A computer can be trained with thousands of photographs to recognise a dandelion as a plant with green leaves and yellow petals. You, however, can look at a dandelion and understand that in different situations it belongs to different categories. A dandelion in your vegetable garden is a weed, but in a bouquet from your child it’s a delightful flower. A dandelion in a salad is food, but people also consume dandelions as herbal medicine.
In other words, your brain effortlessly categorises objects by their function, not just their physical form. Some scientists believe that this incredible ability of the brain, called ad hoc category construction, may be fundamental to the way brains work.
Also, unlike a computer, your brain isn’t a bunch of parts in an empty case. Your brain inhabits a body, a complex web of systems that include over 600 muscles in motion, internal organs, a heart that pumps 7,500 litres of blood per day, and dozens of hormones and other chemicals, all of which must be coordinated, continually, to digest food, excrete waste, provide energy and fight illness.[…]
If we want a computer that thinks, feels, sees or acts like us, it must regulate a body – or something like a body – with a complex collection of systems that it must keep in balance to continue operating, and with sensations to keep that regulation in check. Today’s computers don’t work this way, but perhaps some engineers can come up with something that’s enough like a body to provide this necessary ingredient.
For now, ‘brain as computer’ remains just a metaphor. Metaphors can be wonderful for explaining complex topics in simple terms, but they fail when people treat the metaphor as an explanation. Metaphors provide the illusion of knowledge.
(Adapted from https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/can-we-build-brain-computer/ Published: 24th October, 2021, retrieved on February 9th, 2022)
Based on the text, mark the statements below as TRUE (T) or FALSE (F).
( ) Unlike a computer, it is hard for our brain to classify objects according to a specific purpose.
( ) The author rules out the possibility that computers may emulate the human brain someday.
( ) The brain adapts as one both matures and becomes more knowledgeable.
The statements are, respectively:
Here’s why we’ll never be able to build a brain in a computer
It’s easy to equate brains and computers – they’re both thinking machines, after all. But the comparison doesn’t really stand up to closer inspection, as Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett reveals.
People often describe the brain as a computer, as if neurons are like hardware and the mind is software. But this metaphor is deeply flawed.
A computer is built from static parts, whereas your brain constantly rewires itself as you age and learn. A computer stores information in files that are retrieved exactly, but brains don’t store information in any literal sense. Your memory is a constant construction of electrical pulses and swirling chemicals, and the same remembrance can be reassembled in different ways at different times.
Brains also do something critical that computers today can’t. A computer can be trained with thousands of photographs to recognise a dandelion as a plant with green leaves and yellow petals. You, however, can look at a dandelion and understand that in different situations it belongs to different categories. A dandelion in your vegetable garden is a weed, but in a bouquet from your child it’s a delightful flower. A dandelion in a salad is food, but people also consume dandelions as herbal medicine.
In other words, your brain effortlessly categorises objects by their function, not just their physical form. Some scientists believe that this incredible ability of the brain, called ad hoc category construction, may be fundamental to the way brains work.
Also, unlike a computer, your brain isn’t a bunch of parts in an empty case. Your brain inhabits a body, a complex web of systems that include over 600 muscles in motion, internal organs, a heart that pumps 7,500 litres of blood per day, and dozens of hormones and other chemicals, all of which must be coordinated, continually, to digest food, excrete waste, provide energy and fight illness.[…]
If we want a computer that thinks, feels, sees or acts like us, it must regulate a body – or something like a body – with a complex collection of systems that it must keep in balance to continue operating, and with sensations to keep that regulation in check. Today’s computers don’t work this way, but perhaps some engineers can come up with something that’s enough like a body to provide this necessary ingredient.
For now, ‘brain as computer’ remains just a metaphor. Metaphors can be wonderful for explaining complex topics in simple terms, but they fail when people treat the metaphor as an explanation. Metaphors provide the illusion of knowledge.
(Adapted from https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/can-we-build-brain-computer/ Published: 24th October, 2021, retrieved on February 9th, 2022)
Based on the text, mark the statements below as TRUE (T) or FALSE (F).
( ) Unlike a computer, it is hard for our brain to classify objects according to a specific purpose.
( ) The author rules out the possibility that computers may emulate the human brain someday.
( ) The brain adapts as one both matures and becomes more knowledgeable.
The statements are, respectively:
Here’s why we’ll never be able to build a brain in a computer
It’s easy to equate brains and computers – they’re both thinking machines, after all. But the comparison doesn’t really stand up to closer inspection, as Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett reveals.
People often describe the brain as a computer, as if neurons are like hardware and the mind is software. But this metaphor is deeply flawed.
A computer is built from static parts, whereas your brain constantly rewires itself as you age and learn. A computer stores information in files that are retrieved exactly, but brains don’t store information in any literal sense. Your memory is a constant construction of electrical pulses and swirling chemicals, and the same remembrance can be reassembled in different ways at different times.
Brains also do something critical that computers today can’t. A computer can be trained with thousands of photographs to recognise a dandelion as a plant with green leaves and yellow petals. You, however, can look at a dandelion and understand that in different situations it belongs to different categories. A dandelion in your vegetable garden is a weed, but in a bouquet from your child it’s a delightful flower. A dandelion in a salad is food, but people also consume dandelions as herbal medicine.
In other words, your brain effortlessly categorises objects by their function, not just their physical form. Some scientists believe that this incredible ability of the brain, called ad hoc category construction, may be fundamental to the way brains work.
Also, unlike a computer, your brain isn’t a bunch of parts in an empty case. Your brain inhabits a body, a complex web of systems that include over 600 muscles in motion, internal organs, a heart that pumps 7,500 litres of blood per day, and dozens of hormones and other chemicals, all of which must be coordinated, continually, to digest food, excrete waste, provide energy and fight illness.[…]
If we want a computer that thinks, feels, sees or acts like us, it must regulate a body – or something like a body – with a complex collection of systems that it must keep in balance to continue operating, and with sensations to keep that regulation in check. Today’s computers don’t work this way, but perhaps some engineers can come up with something that’s enough like a body to provide this necessary ingredient.
For now, ‘brain as computer’ remains just a metaphor. Metaphors can be wonderful for explaining complex topics in simple terms, but they fail when people treat the metaphor as an explanation. Metaphors provide the illusion of knowledge.
(Adapted from https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/can-we-build-brain-computer/ Published: 24th October, 2021, retrieved on February 9th, 2022)
The passage in which the verb phrase indicates a necessity is:
READ TEXT I AND ANSWER QUESTION.
