Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has organised the first Auditors’ Day event in Oman, bringing together governance and assurance experts from across the Sultanate.

Around 60 internal audit managers and specialists from both the public and the private sectors attended the event at PDO’s Learning and Development Centre.

The objective was to establish a national auditing platform to facilitate cross learning, best practice sharing, and encourage more networking in the auditing community.

PDO Managing Director Raoul Restucci said: “Auditors can bring huge strategic value and independent oversight to any organisation or business to ensure things are being done in the right way, to identify and proactively mitigate risks, and to disseminate learning and share best practice.

“PDO sees auditors as valuable partners who deliver efficient, sustainable, and viable solutions to business challenges in a rapidly changing world and help us to manage our controls and systems that we operate effectively at corporate and functional level.

“This event will help drive governance standards to the next level, both in PDO and across Oman.”

The event featured speakers from a range of organisations, including the State Audit Institution (SAI), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Ernst and Young (EY), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Shell, as well as PDO.

Areas covered the strategic value of internal auditing, its role in the rapidly evolving cyber security landscape, Omani law, conflicts of interest, and internal auditing data analytics and “conduct-risk” methods. There were also networking opportunities and a panel discussion at the end.