Skills That Will Prepare You for the Future

This blog is the fifth in the series, Fighting Fraud Requires Anticipatory Skills.

There are significant changes happening that will impact the way we operate in the future. These changes include software that will automate a significant number of the tasks we perform during an investigation. Will it be possible to automate fraud fighting and make the fraud fighter irrelevant? Will human fraud fighters be replaced 5, 10, or 20 years from now? If we don’t embrace change, we could find ourselves out of a job.

The future can be bright if you choose to develop the right skills. Focusing on the following skills will ensure your fraud fighting career isn’t cut short:

• Harness new technology – Research both hardware and software developments and evaluate how these technologies may help businesses monitor for and prevent fraud. Networking, visiting with vendors, and attending sessions at the ACFE Global Conference are great ways to access new ideas. However, attending the conference doesn’t preclude you from being lazy the rest of the year.
• Focus on skills that computers cannot perform – The automation of certain tasks will change the way we fight fraud. Therefore, the need to enhance the tasks that can’t be automated becomes very important. Below are just a few examples:
  • Interviewing skills – It would be difficult for a computer to perform an interview because I do not see a way to automate the questions. Every interview and subject is different.
  • Linking data that isn’t connected – As the amount of available data grows, we will have the ability to evaluate more and more relationships among data sets. There are logical connections that will become automated if they haven’t already. But there are also illogical ways to connect data for fraud fighting purposes. A common one is the comparison of employee addresses to vendor addresses. As these are identified and evaluated, this process can become automated to connect the information and identify exceptions that require additional research. In the future, we will need to identify these illogical connections.
  • Assessing red flags – There are certain behaviors and habits that computers cannot yet evaluate or consider. It is still hard for managers, executives, and owners to identify the red flags of a fraudster. These can be as simple as the types of clothes a person wears, the trips a person takes, or the car a person drives.
• Learn how to think like a fraudster – Finally, understanding the mind of a fraudster can help identify internal and external threats to an organization. This usually requires years of experience gained through investigating and interviewing fraudsters, but you can boost your knowledge by learning from convicted fraudsters who are willing to tell their stories at conferences, through interviews, or in books.

This is an opportunity to invest in your future. If you can effectively develop these skills, you will ensure your fraud fighting future will be bright.

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