Auditing Strategic & ESG Risk: Building Governance Resilience​
11th - 13th August 2026
Johannesburg - South Africa
Meet Our Trainer
Matej Drascek
Learning Outcomes Key Topic
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Understand strategic risks and their role in shaping organizational performance.
- Evaluate the evolving responsibilities of internal audit in strategic and ESG domains.
- Assess the design and execution of corporate strategy and ESG initiatives.
- Identify critical risks in both strategy development and ESG materiality.
- Audit the integration of ESG within the broader business strategy.
- Apply global frameworks (CSRD, EU Taxonomy, CSDD) to ensure compliance and value alignment.
- Develop audit plans that address board-level risks, strategic KPIs, and ESG performance.
- Facilitate continuous monitoring and reporting of strategic and ESG risks.
- Consult with boards and executives on enhancing strategic governance.
- Bridge the gap between corporate purpose, strategy execution, and stakeholder expectations.
Reason To Attend This Training
- Stay Relevant in a Changing World: Learn how to audit what boards and CEOs now rank among their top risks — strategy and ESG.
- Dual Expertise: Gain a powerful combination of skills to audit both corporate strategy and sustainability performance.
- Assurance at the Highest Level: Learn to provide value-adding insights on board-level decisions and governance practices.
- Practical, Actionable Tools: Walk away with templates, audit plans, and checklists you can immediately apply in your organization.
- Compliance-Ready: Navigate evolving ESG legislation and strategy-related disclosures with confidence.
- Interactive Learning: Participate in workshops, case studies, self-assessments, and live Q&As for real-world applicability.
- Future-Proof Your Audit Function: Anticipate emerging trends and extend your audit scope into the domains of innovation, purpose, and stakeholder trust.
Course Details
Day 1
Session 1: Introduction to Strategic Risk
- - Why strategic risks matter
- - The evolving role of internal audit in strategy
- - This session introduces participants to the concept of strategic risk and explains why it is increasingly important for boards, executive management, and internal audit. It also explores how the role of internal audit is evolving from a traditional control-focused function toward providing assurance over the processes used to identify, assess, and respond to strategic risks.
Session 2: Foundations of Strategy
- - Understanding strategy and strategic risks
- The strategic analysis process: environment, industry, and organizational performance
- - This session focuses on the fundamentals of strategy and helps participants distinguish strategy from operational planning. It explains how organizations analyze their external environment, industry dynamics, and internal performance when developing strategy, and how internal auditors can assess whether these foundations are sufficiently robust.
Day 2
Session 3: Auditing Strategy Development
- - Key steps and risks in strategy formulation
- - Minimum requirements for strategy documents
- - Performance indicators and risk of biases
- - This session examines how strategies are developed and where the main risks in strategy formulation arise. Participants will review the key elements that should be present in strategy documents, consider the quality and relevance of strategic performance indicators, and discuss how bias, over-optimism, and weak assumptions can undermine strategy from the outset.
Session 4: Auditing Strategy Implementation
- - Change management and strategic risk
- - Auditing the cascading and communication of strategy
- - Performance auditing linked to strategy
- - This session addresses the risks that arise when moving from strategic intent to execution. It covers how strategy is communicated, translated into action, and embedded across the organization, as well as how internal audit can assess implementation effectiveness and link performance auditing to strategic objectives.
Day 3
Session 5: Introduction to ESG Strategy
- - ESG as part of corporate strategy
- - ESG risks, opportunities, and stakeholder expectations
- - Strategic relevance of sustainability and governance topics
Session 6: Auditing ESG Strategy Development and Implementation
- - ESG strategic objectives and governance
- - Materiality assessments and stakeholder engagement
- - ESG KPIs, reporting systems, and monitoring mechanisms
Session 7: Calculating ROI of ESG Activities
- - Why ESG ROI matters
- - Cost-benefit logic for ESG activities
- - Linking ESG initiatives to measurable business value
- - Challenges in attributing outcomes and benefits
Session 8: Social Impact Measurement
- - Outputs, outcomes, and impact
- - Practical approaches to measuring social value
- - Reliability and limitations of social impact data
- - Internal audit’s role in assessing social impact measurement frameworks
Course Fee
Get In Touch
- Main Office: 105 Shannon Rd, St. Augustine, FL 32095, USA
- Branch Office: Office # 209, 2nd floor, Noor Trade Center, Gulshan Iqbal Block 13 - A, Karachi, Pakistan
- +92-301-2938376
- training@indulead.com
Find Us