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Originally Posted by Michael T
Yep!! That's the way I read it...
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
Yep!! That's the way I read it...

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
I am seeing there is some confusion here. Mike, you are agreeing with Andy and at the same time disagreeing by saying that you cannot audit the Internal Audit process because you are part of the QA Dept, and I totally agree to the latter! I also agree that other auditors who are not part of the QA dept. can audit the Internal Audit Process. The process owner cannot!
Originally Posted by AndyN
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........
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........
When an auditor performs an audit, he/she is supposed to audit the 'process', which means in this case the Auditor has to audit the Internal Audit process, not just the internal audits actually conducted by the other auditors. Furthermore, ISO 19011 Auditing guidelines states in 4d - "Auditors are independent of the activity being audited.......", thus putting to rest that a QMR or a QA Manager can audit the Internal Audit process. I would agree that the Internal Audit process owner can audit other auditors audits only, not his own audit or his own process, which includes the internal audit process.
Also, being the process owner, he may be able to see other auditors mistakes while auditing their audits, but may totally/partially ignore the internal audit design/structure, which is actually the nucleus of auditing Internal Audits.
Ciao.