A
AllanJ
JSW05 said:I wonder if there's enough basic competence to go around, with the understanding that a significant proportion of competence is experience, which can't be taught.
Ah! What a fabulous question that truly energizes me.
One of the problems professional auditing has experienced has been the reduction in general ability and competence of those assigned to be auditors. For that, the explosive growth in ISO 9K registrations is much to blame. The demand for auditing and hence auditors outstripped the supply of capable people and those knowledgeable in the processes, technology and businesses they were required to audit.
Auditing is about the assessment of applied knowledge and to repeat one of my published sayings: "the application of knowledge cannot be assessed by assigning ignorance to the task". But ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing. Experience and training can replace (destroy) ignorance. It takes time and time was not given. The net result has been a lowering of the quality of the audit service experienced by management which then thought it unnecessary to assign the best people to the audit pool, thus creating a vicious circle and self-fulfilling prophesy in their minds.
Poor quality auditing has, in my view, been a major contributor to the generally disappointing results of ISO 9K. Those who rushed to promote it and made it sound so easy (a quick fix etc) did much damage.
But, it is not irreversible. It takes only a few dedicated people and firms to patiently do what is required, demonstrate the results such that general calibre of assigned auditors is eventually raised to the requisite level of "competence".
I have written much more on this matter elsewhere and will not repeat it now.