Risk Oversight hosted several AI peer groups this year, bringing together internal auditors, controllers, and finance professionals to share what’s actually working. Not the theoretical stuff. Not the “AI will transform everything” keynote material. The real, practical, “I tried this last Tuesday” kind of ideas.
Two favorite tools emerged—applicable whether you’re in internal audit or financial reporting. Both require zero training. Just curiosity and five spare minutes.
AI Shortcut #1: Build Yourself a Prompt Library
I’ve been using AI prompts to support internal control work for a while. But formalizing them? Sharing them with my team? Not so much. They lived in my head and random threads, in the “I’ll remember that” category of things I definitely did not remember.
Then someone at our peer group mentioned they were building a prompt library for their internal audit team—a shared collection of go-to prompts their team could grab and reuse. It’s such an obvious idea I’m almost annoyed I didn’t do it sooner.
Prompts are like recipes. A good one saves you from staring at a blank screen. A great one produces consistent results every time. And just like recipes, they’re worth writing down and sharing.
Where do you get prompts? Ask AI. Seriously. “Give me five prompts to improve my internal control documentation” is a perfectly legitimate question. It feels like cheating. It’s not. It’s just easy and efficient.
A few prompts I’ve found especially useful:
For generating audit procedures: “For each control below, generate no more than five audit test steps and five document requests. Format as: Control objective, Key risk addressed, Test steps (numbered), Evidence requests (bulleted).”
For tidying control matrices (my personal favorite—I spend an unreasonable amount of time on these): “Review for consistency in language, completeness of risk linkages, and clarity of descriptions. Suggest improvements.”
AI Shortcut #2: Let AI Write Your Excel Code
This is relevant for financial reporting readers, but also auditors doing spreadsheet-heavy work—really, anyone living in Excel.
Confession: I’ve struggled with Excel coding for years. Macros intimidated me. I could never remember them. Then I started asking Claude.ai to write the code for me. Revolutionary? No. Life-changing? A little bit, yes.
Need a script that creates a grouped lead schedule from a trial balance export? Ask AI. Copy. Paste. Done.
Bank reconciliation that matches cleared items automatically? Same approach.
The Common Thread
Both of these shortcuts require no training, no expensive software, and no permission from IT. Try them today during lunch. The professionals in our peer groups weren’t waiting for their organizations to roll out AI strategies. They were experimenting, finding out what worked, and building small efficiencies that added up.
And yes—before my more cautious readers start drafting concerned emails—these aren’t silver bullets. You still need to protect confidential information, validate your outputs, and yes, audit your prompts and code. (We’re auditors. Of course we need to audit the thing we’re using to audit.) More on that next time.
My quick challenges to you: What’s one prompt you could reuse? What’s one spreadsheet task AI could code for you?
Start there. And if you figure out something brilliant, share it. That’s how the rest of us learn.
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Risk Oversight helps organizations strengthen their internal audit, internal controls, and governance programs—with practical solutions tailored to your reality, not someone else’s. If you’re looking for support in 2026, let’s talk: adrienne@riskoversight.ca.