Ruthanne Dyson

I attribute my success to never accepting the status quo. Whether that's in my own life, if there's something that I'm not satisfied with that I want to change, or if that's something that I see around me that I'm like, this isn't working and somebody should do something about that, I guess I'll be that person because no one else is raising their hands. For me, that's the thing that has always kept me going, that has really pushed me into the type of role that I have now, which is very unique and has a lot of responsibility but also a lot of trust. It's just always pushing that boundary of what is accepted as the average or the normal.

The best advice I've received is to just keep showing up and not worry so much about what everyone else around me is doing. I had a female boss at one point who I think is a queen. As I was getting ready to leave Human Services, I was getting worked up and worried that I wasn't going to be able to find a good role because a lot of accounting roles want specific certifications that I didn't have. Not because I couldn't do it, but just because I don't take tests well and that wasn't where my passion was at, so I just hadn't done it. I was really doubting my abilities because I didn't have that crap that goes on paper, and she shut that down so hard and was like, that is the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard, you can absolutely do it. I think having that person who was like, just stop, like stop thinking like that, no you're awesome, that's what it all comes down to. Having a little bit of faith in yourself and not worrying about what everybody else is doing. If you're too caught up in what you think you should be doing, you're gonna miss what you're actually doing.

My advice is to not worry so much about whether there are other women in the field or who does or doesn't do it. Who cares? Who cares who does it? Who cares who doesn't do it? If it is something that interests you, then do it. If you like it, do it. Don't let yourself get bogged down by what everybody else is doing or not doing. You know, maybe there aren't a lot of women in this industry, but if it interests you, if you like cars, if you want to work on cars, you want to design cars, do it. There's nothing that says that you can't, just because it hasn't been done before.

The biggest challenge right now is that everything seems to be changing really rapidly, both from a regulatory standpoint and in terms of what tools are available and what pressures there are on the organization. For us as staff-level people to have to worry about every facet of the organization is pretty unique to internal audit, especially a really small internal audit shop like we have for how big our organization is. The speed that everything is changing, combined with what everyone is dealing with outside of work and the general burnout, makes it really hard. Right now especially, people do not want to have conversations about changing the status quo or doing things differently. So the challenge is really trying not to convince people to have an open mind, because that will never work, but trying to show them something that makes them curious and makes them want to have a more open mind and get excited about what that could look like. On the opportunity side, I think the profession is really opening up to less traditional candidates. The audit field is learning to acknowledge the strengths of people that have different backgrounds and experiences, and recognizing that you don't have to have some specific set of credentials to be good at this profession. I've said before when hiring people that I can teach you how to audit, but I can't teach you how to think. The one requirement as an auditor is that you can think critically, and there are a whole lot of people out there that can do that. It's a really great career field that has served me very well, and it's a huge opportunity that the profession as a whole is opening up to people with more non-traditional backgrounds.

The values most important to me are respect, accountability, openness, genuineness, and curiosity. I wouldn't say kindness in the traditional sense, because kindness oftentimes gets mushed and squished until it turns into being passive. So for me, it's more about being respectful and authentic. And curiosity is huge for me, whether that's being curious about a business process or just curious about who somebody is as a person, what drives that person forward, what makes them tick, what they're passionate about, what scares them, what keeps them up at night. To me, it's so important to be curious about each other.