Internal auditor independence

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My company recently underwent a preassessment audit. One of the elements we were written up on concerned auditor independence. I am the Quality Manager and Management Rep./Lead Auditor. The auditors I am using are my Receiving Inspector and the Document Control Specialist. I was told that since Document Control was under my jurisdiction, I could not have him audit quality/inspection.
4.17 states "audits shall be carried out by personnel independent of those having direct responsibility for the activity being audited." Although Document Control is my responsibility, D/C is not directly responisble for quality areas such as inspection (receiving through shipping), calibration, etc. I think it should be OK for him to audit these areas. Are there any thoughts on this issue? We are a company of approximately 60 people and finding those qualified, able and having time is limited.

What could I do to solve this problem?

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[Marc]

The auditor is off base. If you use that logic everyone is under the company president so they're biased.

As I understand it, it's the independence of the specific auditor, not the auditor's boss. I see no reason why you can't audit your boss.

You cannot audit things you do. You can audit things others do that you do not do.

[Laura M]

I agree with Marc. I was Management Rep. I had 3 internal auditors working for me. A trained internal auditor from another area performed the audit of the Internal audit program, my collection of data for mgmt. review, and document control area (which was under the resp. of the Lead auditor.) Funny this should come up. I "inherited" an old school auditor that refused to work for me because she said it was not a unbiased situation....she thought I would give a "bad" performance review if she found N/C's with "my" quality system. We agreed to disagree for about 6 months, and she moved to another department. In the grand scheme of things, who better to audit than those most familiar with the program. As long as N/C's are objective, I think you have a good set up.

Laura

[Marc]

See http://Elsmar.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000054.html

[barb butrym]

Where did this come from all of a sudden? It seems to be the question of the week...list servs and all. Something must have pushed it out from under a bush....