Over the years I've gotten to work with a lot of other auditors, and I've learned something from each of them. Sometimes they've just had a really interesting perspective on the work of Quality: I remember an external auditor who explained over lunch that a few years before he had started his own business (something unrelated to Quality) and it failed. When he analyzed the failure, he concluded that the root cause was that he didn't know how to run a business. So he trained to become a Quality auditor, which would allow him to look at many other companies and study how they were run. His plan was that when he finally felt he had learned how to run a business, he would quit auditing and try again.
But sometimes I've learned techniques. One of the most surprising was when I was working with a colleague on an internal audit, and as we were about to wind up one interview he asked, "Just one more question: Is there anything you would like us to write up? That it would help you for us to write up?"
Wait, … what? In my experience most auditees look at an audit like some kind of oral exam: the last thing they usually want is to volunteer something to be written up.
But my friend was completely serious. He pointed out that as internal auditors we are there to help the organization improve. And all we are ever able to see is a sampling. So maybe there's something that isn't working the way it should, but that we missed. And if it would help our auditee for us to look at it, why not ask for it?
In fact the auditee said yes there was, or at least maybe. She wasn't sure, but what did we make of these project requests she had gotten yesterday? We looked at them, and they were requests for her to set up and track projects where half the estimated durations were blank and the costs were listed as "Don't know." We agreed that this didn't look like enough for her to work with, but for various reasons there wasn't an easy way for her to push back. (That sounds unlikely the way I'm describing it, but I'm leaving out a lot of details.) Most of the project requests that she got were just fine, so there didn't appear to be a systemic problem. But we did write a minor nonconformity that she was being asked to move forward without the planning data she needed to do her job.
In the big picture, that was probably the most meaningful finding we wrote during that entire audit, the one most likely to help the organization improve. And we would never have gotten it if my friend hadn't asked for it.
I've used that question ever since. Often the answer is No, but even then I think it helps the auditee see the audit differently. It helps make the point that this really is a collaborative effort — that we really are on the same team.
Of course there are risks to watch for, when you ask a question like this. Once in a while an auditee will take this as an invitation to air some personal grudge against a coworker, or to try to score political points in a fight between departments. Obviously you have to watch for those and can't write them up.
But it's a good question. And I'm grateful to my friend for having taught it to me.
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