John, you give good points - but are they enough to wake up the management who are busy flying by the seats of their pants. ... I saw so many .... cases in my years of 3rd party auditor.
1) ... auditor can ask many questions but do we ask? - - Auditors ask, but don't get clear answers. After all - the audit is such a short sample.
2) Does the chief executive own the process for investing in improvement of the system, its processes and its services? - - The auditor probably can get a feeling about this, but has a problem how to present it in the report in a polite, yet clear way (a change-inducing way). After all, the chief may own it, yet his manner may be owning it efficiently without using time for documents. He has so many things to be responsible for...
3) Is the money coming in fast enough to invest in improvement - - In today's situation many other things can be used as explanation (such that are beyond the management's control).
4) .. "repay to customers?" and "lose and need to replace customers?" - - Well these should be rather simple. Yet if the company has not chosen these as their performance indicators (saying, e.g. that "bottom line" is their prime indicator), then what can the auditor do? (Bottom line includes those already.)
Maybe it is not enough to reach the Management Team. The Board of Directors should maybe be interested? But also here the question is - how? Probably only quality news that would reach them might be cancelling of certification.
I doubt about becoming a quality entrepreneur - there are so few potential customers - who are near to seeing the need but have not already hired enough professionals to take care of systematic quality.