Terminating an Internal Audit - Area totally out of control

B

Bob Bonville

#1
I recently entered an assembly area where I immediately discovered the area to be totally out of control. Obvious, glaring findings were virtually everywhere. This particular area was given a one week advance notice of my planned audit.
After spending only 15 minutes, I decided to terminate the audit. I notified the area supervor & manager and my director of my action. At the outbrief I told the functional leaders that I would return in 1 week, and would complete my audit.

Question: Have any of you experienced this type of situation and what would you have done under similar circumstances?

Thank you
Bob
 
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Phil Fields

#2
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

Bob,
Fortunately I have not experienced this type of situation. By stopping the audit, with the plan of returning in one week, do you expect much will change?
Looking at it from the outside, it may have been better to continue longer, collect the objective evidence, and then write up the nonconformances.

Phil
 
D

D.Scott

#3
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

I recently entered an assembly area where I immediately discovered the area to be totally out of control. Obvious, glaring findings were virtually everywhere. This particular area was given a one week advance notice of my planned audit.
After spending only 15 minutes, I decided to terminate the audit. I notified the area supervor & manager and my director of my action. At the outbrief I told the functional leaders that I would return in 1 week, and would complete my audit.

Question: Have any of you experienced this type of situation and what would you have done under similar circumstances?

Thank you
Bob
Hard to know if any of my audits were as bad as the one you had but I think you were justified in what you did. I trust you documented everything you found during the audit. Those findings should be communicated to upper management the same as any other findings.

When you go back to "finish up", be careful you don't carry an attitude. Be objective and try not to nit-pick. Look carefully at your findings. Try to group what can be grouped rather than writing up everything separately. Piling on won't help in this situation. Management needs to know the situation but it won't help to beat a dead horse. Audit fairly, document and report the facts. It is probably obvious there is a deeper problem in that area that management will want to investigate. Be sure they have good objective evidence to work with.

Good luck,

Dave
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#4
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

I recently entered an assembly area where I immediately discovered the area to be totally out of control. Obvious, glaring findings were virtually everywhere. This particular area was given a one week advance notice of my planned audit.
After spending only 15 minutes, I decided to terminate the audit. I notified the area supervor & manager and my director of my action. At the outbrief I told the functional leaders that I would return in 1 week, and would complete my audit.

Question: Have any of you experienced this type of situation and what would you have done under similar circumstances?

Thank you
Bob
I think it would be good to turn the subjective "totally out of control" into objective evidence, meaning I probably would have proceeded and documented what I found. You might have come out of it with a fairly prodigious list of findings, but the list would be helpful in prioritizing improvements.
 

Coury Ferguson

Moderator here to help
Staff member
Super Moderator
#5
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

I recently entered an assembly area where I immediately discovered the area to be totally out of control. Obvious, glaring findings were virtually everywhere. This particular area was given a one week advance notice of my planned audit.
After spending only 15 minutes, I decided to terminate the audit. I notified the area supervor & manager and my director of my action. At the outbrief I told the functional leaders that I would return in 1 week, and would complete my audit.

Question: Have any of you experienced this type of situation and what would you have done under similar circumstances?

Thank you
Bob
Why terminate the Audit? You are identifying issues that could affect the output of the product (assuming it was process/product related), and you wanted to stop the Audit? :confused: :nope:

I would have not stopped the audit, but that is just me.
 

Ajit Basrur

Staff member
Admin
#6
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

I agree with Coury - since its an Internal Audit, I shall try to find all NCs and summarize in a report and shall have an additional surprise audit at a later date.

Just my :2cents:
 
#7
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

Question: Have any of you experienced this type of situation and what would you have done under similar circumstances?
I have seen similar situations, but have not yet terminated an audit for that reason (I have done so when I was quite unable to get hold of any key staff despite prior agreements, though). However, sometimes 15 minutes can be quite enough to decide that a process is out of control, complete with objective evidence and all.

To continue racking up findings in that situation may do more harm than good, as Dave noted. It will simply be overkill.
 

SteelMaiden

Super Moderator
Super Moderator
#8
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

If you should choose to continue the audit, you may want to think about paring down the scope. If you overwhelm your auditees with trying to audit every portion of every process they may may be involved with, you might just get them into a hole they cannot dig out of. You can always go back several times to audit to a narrower scope, giving them time to fix a portion at a time. If you overwhelm them you face the risk of them being resentful for a very long time, where if you take small chunks and give them time to assimilate the "culture" they will probably be able to see the value instead of the proverbial "cannot see the forest for the trees."
 
B

Bob Bonville

#9
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

A little more background for the curious.
The particular audit area was supervised by people who were well aware of the requirements and had let the place go since the last audit 3 months prior. They had totally disregarded my "notice of audit" by not policing their area and performing some preparation. My rational for terminating the audit was that I wasn't going to waste my already taxed audit resources to document this mess when these people knew better. By the way, I have never performed a suprise or unannounced audit. I don't feel it should be necessary.
 

Coury Ferguson

Moderator here to help
Staff member
Super Moderator
#10
Re: Terminating an Internal Audit

A little more background for the curious.
The particular audit area was supervised by people who were well aware of the requirements and had let the place go since the last audit 3 months prior. They had totally disregarded my "notice of audit" by not policing their area and performing some preparation. My rational for terminating the audit was that I wasn't going to waste my already taxed audit resources to document this mess when these people knew better.
That is still not a reason to terminate an Internal Audit.
 
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