How do you Audit Internal Audits?

P

Phiobi

#1
As I do every year I am coming to the point at which I need to assign somebody to audit internal audits. To the letter of the standard it should besomebody impartial to the process...... at the same time it needs to be somebody competant in auditing..... all "3" of the people I have onsite that are competant cannot be seen as impartial as they perform the audits.

I ask myself this same question every year, but never come up with an answer other than use the auditor who has performed the least audits to give them a chance at being impartial without avoiding half of the system audits already performed.

I have thought about getting all auditors to review the system and combining it into one big report?!?
 
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B

Bill Pflanz

#2
You cannot audit the audit system if you are responsible for it but that would not prevent your other auditors from auditing it. Since many auditors do not have that as a full time job, they are usually volunteers from outside the quality department. Although it would not make sense to audit their own work, they could find plenty of samples from your prior audits.

In addition, the auditors would be auditing the policies and procedures not the people. There are plenty of things to audit such as audit training, the audit plan and schedules, the documentation, tracking completion of auditing findings etc. None of these would be biased by the auditor if they did what they always should do and collect objective evidence.

Bill Pflanz
 

Raffy

Quite Involved in Discussions
#3
Hi Phiobi,
In our end our QMR is the one conducting audit for the Internal Audit Process, was trained and certified by an accrediting body in the field of internal/external audit.

Raffy :cool:
 
P

Phiobi

#4
You cannot audit the audit system if you are responsible for it but that would not prevent your other auditors from auditing it. Since many auditors do not have that as a full time job, they are usually volunteers from outside the quality department. Although it would not make sense to audit their own work, they could find plenty of samples from your prior audits.

In addition, the auditors would be auditing the policies and procedures not the people. There are plenty of things to audit such as audit training, the audit plan and schedules, the documentation, tracking completion of auditing findings etc. None of these would be biased by the auditor if they did what they always should do and collect objective evidence.

Bill Pflanz
I agree and this is how we perform this every year it's just I find myself asking this question every year and wondered if everybody comes up with the same answer...
 
S

Sam4Quality

#5

Originally Posted by Raffy


Hi Phiobi,
In our end our QMR is the one conducting audit for the Internal Audit Process, was trained and certified by an accrediting body in the field of internal/external audit.

Raffy :cool:
Don't you think it is a violation of the standards, where Clause 8.2.2 says "An auditor cannot audit his own work"?

The Internal Audit Process was designed by the QMR, and is used by the QMR, then how can he audit it, himself? I mean only from a standards point of view.

Bill has answered Phiobi's query most flexibly.

Ciao. :cool:
 
T

trainerbob

#6
I agree with Sam4Quality. I don't care how well trained your QMR is he/she should not be auditing the process he/she is responsible for.

Another option for auditing internal audits is to bring in an outside auditor for that particular audit. Some organizations do that if they feel their own auditors are too much involved in the auditing to be unbiased.
 
#7
I think you guys are a little off base here. Being the architect of the audit process and performing audits of it is perfectly ok! The problem comes if they audit their own audits - their 'work'. It doesn't say 'can't audit your process'......

If I designed the process, I might want to audit to see if my auditors were doing what I had designed them to do, so I can find out all kinds of things.....just as long as I didn't audit the audits I'd done.......

I believe you are making this too complicated. Someone can be objective and impartial about the others who are supposed to employ a process........
 
M

Michael T

#8
I think you guys are a little off base here. Being the architect of the audit process and performing audits of it is perfectly ok! The problem comes if they audit their own audits - their 'work'. It doesn't say 'can't audit your process'......

If I designed the process, I might want to audit to see if my auditors were doing what I had designed them to do, so I can find out all kinds of things.....just as long as I didn't audit the audits I'd done.......

I believe you are making this too complicated. Someone can be objective and impartial about the others who are supposed to employ a process........
Yep!! That's the way I read it... :agree:

As a member of the Quality Department, neither me nor the QA Manager can audit the internal audit process as we are directly involved in, and responsible for, the maintenance and upkeep of the QMS - part of which are internal audits.

However, my internal auditors are not part of the Quality Department but members of other departments throughout the organization. As such, when they audit the Internal Audit Process, they are not auditing their own work as they don't work for the Quality Department but provide a collateral duty (voluntarily) as Internal Auditors.

BTW... I've never had our Registrar or any other 3rd party auditors find anything amiss with this.

Cheers!!

Mike
 
A

Arena

#9
As I do every year I am coming to the point at which I need to assign somebody to audit internal audits. To the letter of the standard it should besomebody impartial to the process...... at the same time it needs to be somebody competant in auditing..... all "3" of the people I have onsite that are competant cannot be seen as impartial as they perform the audits.

I ask myself this same question every year, but never come up with an answer other than use the auditor who has performed the least audits to give them a chance at being impartial without avoiding half of the system audits already performed.

I have thought about getting all auditors to review the system and combining it into one big report?!?
Internal Audit Program is discussed within the Management Review Meeting, therefore it is not part of our Audit Plan.
 
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