When a crisis or a hot topic dominates the headlines, what specific numbers or KPIs do you ask management to bring to the board so the conversation stays disciplined instead of reactive?

I'd say there's not really one universal KPI, which is maybe the answer you didn't want.

But what I would really, really suggest, it really depends on the company, the industry, the company stage of maturity, and how closely the issue at hand connects to the long-term strategy.

What I do think is consistent in all situations is the importance of looking at leading indicators versus lagging indicators and paying very close attention to the trend line rather than to one single data point.

And let me explain that with a simple example using revenue.

So reported sales, we all know that's a lagging indicator.

It tells you what's already happened.

How do you tell those two things apart?

So given your experience doing this, 'cause you've been doing this for a long time, what do you see are some of the common challenges or maybe some of the common missteps that happen for audit committees, you know, as they're trying to oversee this really complex patchwork of risk?

Well, I believe one of the biggest challenges, um, that audit committees can face is g- given this, as you said, this daunting list of exposures that are out there, is avoiding tunnel vision or going down some rabbit holes on issues that may not ultimately matter, and in doing so, losing sight of what really matters to the organization.

At the end of the day, we need to understand the strategic direction of the company.

That's more of the broad enterprise level.

But I also think audit committees need to look at the organization from the outside in.

And what I mean by that is we need to continually ask ourself whether the company's disclosures and external reporting that we're sharing are an accurate picture of what's happening within the organization.

My deep experience in investor relations was invaluable as it taught me how to look at a company from the outside in with only the information that the company provided.

So can you talk about, from your perspective, what a strong working relationship between those two parties, the internal auditors and the audit committee, should really look like?