James was formerly Chief Audit Executive for AstraZeneca PLC from 2002-2009. Prior to that he had various corporate and commercial finance roles, culminating as Head of Group Financial Reporting for AstraZeneca PLC and - after working on a Masters Degree In Management - seconded into HR to be head of Global Leadership Development programmes.  

He set up a consulting business in 2010 providing training, development and coaching in the following key areas:

• Risk Assurance Mapping
• Lean/Agile Auditing
• Auditing Culture,
• Root Cause Analysis for Internal Audit,
• Influencing and Political Savvy for Internal Audit

He runs open courses with 12 IIA institutes across Europe, including Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Lithuania and the UK. 

He was a speaker at the IIA International Conferences in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2023, and Chair of the EU IAS conference 2017 and 2018 and speaker at the US GAM conference in 2019 on lean/agile auditing. He facilitated the IIA UK conference in 2020 and IIA Ireland conference in 2021.

He has a Masters Degree in management, McGill University, Canada, specialising in organisational effectiveness and culture change. He is CIA qualified.

He is the author of Lean Auditing (published by Wiley in 2015) and “Beyond the Five Whys” (on root cause analysis and systems thinking) (published by Wiley in 2023).

LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-paterson-2749b612/