Put the auditor to sleep

One piece of advice that I regularly give organizations when they are facing an upcoming audit—along with more normal advice like "Answer the question that the auditor asked, but you don't have to volunteer anything else"—is, "Put the auditor to sleep."

But I always have to explain what I mean by that.

Image by muntazar mansory from Pixabay

The point is that when you are an auditor, your mind is usually running along several tracks at once. You've got a list of questions you want to ask the auditee who is standing in front of you right now. But you are also keeping one eye on the clock, because you spent longer than planned talking to the folks in Purchasing and now you have to make up the time somewhere else while still covering the organization in an adequate way. Plus there may be some loose ends from interviews earlier in the day and you are trying to decide if they are worth following up or not. So while the auditee is nervous about being on center stage, the auditor is really only halfway following the discussion. So as long as everything looks normal, routine, even boring ... the auditor will probably be fine with it and willing to move on.

This means everything should look the way it's supposed to look. If the auditor asks for records, you've got them; if you mention a regular meeting, you can produce minutes; records always show the date they were created and the author's name; ... all that kind of thing. Also don't look like you are nervous or afraid. When the auditor says "Show me," you say "Sure, that's easy. It's right here." Then you pull out a file that looks like it is supposed to look, and the auditor gets bored pretty quickly. Before you know it, he's telling you "Thanks for your time, it looks like you're doing a great job." Then he heads back to the conference room to check if it's time for lunch yet.

There is a flip side to this advice, however. It's just to point out that the one thing you want to avoid at all costs is that moment when the auditor has just handed something back to you and then says, "Wait ... can I look at that one again?"

Those words mean that something on the document caught his attention at a subliminal level. He just doesn't know what it is yet. But something was out of place, or missing, or just didn't look right according to the kinds of patterns that auditors look for. And he wants to look at the record again to figure out what it is that flagged his attention.

Those words mean that the auditor just woke up.

All of a sudden, he forgets about the schedule, he forgets about those loose ends from the earlier interviews, and he forgets about the long-winded guy in Purchasing who put him behind. He forgets about lunch. He comes fully awake, and he will scrutinize every line of that document until he figures out what it was that bothered him. Maybe it's something simple, so he can make a note and fall back into semi-somnolence. Or maybe it's a piece of evidence that flatly contradicts all the stuff your CEO said about the company when welcoming him at the Opening Meeting. Maybe it's the beginning of a trail that will lead to him canceling the afternoon's schedule so he can follow it. You just don't know, and in that moment neither does he. But once he's awake, he will make sure to find out.

Don't let this happen to you. Make sure everything looks like it is supposed to look, and you will be in a much securer place. Put your auditor to sleep.