Why are GOOD Internal Auditors so hard to find?

charanjit singh

Involved In Discussions
#21
After reading a certain amount of depressing things about paucity or ineffectiveness of 'good' internal auditors, let me relate my own more fortunate experience.
I am an advisor to a company (I had been their G.M QA and MR for nearly 11 years till some years back). About 5 years back I arranged to have 9 of their staff members, from different departments, trained as Internal Auditors by DNV. I knew it was a generic training and would not be adequate to make them good auditors. As Sidney said you can't become a good driver simply through class room training. So I followed it up, showing them how the requirements that they had learnt applied to various operations and processes in their own company. I conducted a number of preparatory sessions before they could carry out their first internal audit. I helped them prepare checklists that would be applicable to their particular areas of operations. It took three successive internal audits to make them reasonably good internal auditors.

Here i must add that I had complete support of the management. Each of the Audit reports was discussed by the management in a meeting with all departments. Wherever the discussions and feedback indicated a need for changes in procedures or for some specific training, the same was carried out.

Of course, if there had been no management support this story would also have been one of the typical ones.
 
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samsung

#22
One more reason that I can assign to poor outcome of IAs is poor quality of CB audits. I haven't seen CB auditors auditing 'Internal Auditing' as seriously as it's required to be done on their part and highlighted to the top management that, see here's what you need to seriously look at if you are set to achieve some ROI for implementing the QMS.
 
#23
One more reason that I can assign to poor outcome of IAs is poor quality of CB audits. I haven't seen CB auditors auditing 'Internal Auditing' as seriously as it's required to be done on their part and highlighted to the top management that, see here's what you need to seriously look at if you are set to achieve some ROI for implementing the QMS.
That's because - for the most part - internal audits emulate external audits!

I don't agree that there aren't good auditors out there! Good auditors are out there, however, the people who run audit programs think that all they have to do is emulate what the CBs do. From checklists to grading audit non-conformities, audit management completely fails to address the issues that management find helpful. Management don't get behind audits and, hence, don't give time etc to findings, corrective actions etc. because audits are forced on them and their people! How many audit managers know how to put together an audit or how to prepare the assigned auditor to know what to 'go after'?

Audit planning doesn't involve management - it's too easy to fall back to a situation of putting a 12 month schedule together and push it on management, while keeping the CB happy, because it's what many of them expect. If the auditors who were assigned to do audits were coached properly to understand the scope and criteria (NOT ISO 9001) of the audit, the history of the performance of the process etc., they'd stand a better chance of getting something right! My guess is many audit managers hope that once 'trained' they can give a checklist and a copy of the standard to their auditors and they'll 'get it'!
 

Ajit Basrur

Staff member
Admin
#24
This thread is very interesting :)

Why GOOD Internal Auditors are difficult to find ? I feel because in most organizations that I have seen the Internal Auditors in most cases are hand picked based on their work experience within the function and then an auditor pool is identified from all functions within that organization.

Often, I felt that the internal auditors are good technically but lack the probing skills or the personality to become an "overall good internal auditor".

Additionally, some auditors picked are also junior in their function with the result, they get easily bullied when they approach seniors.

Rarely, I have seen that an individual would approach to the MR or the Quality Manager and propose to be an Internal Auditor !
 
R

RAVINDER KUMAR DUDI

#25
Some of the time we found that internel Auditors are under pressure of senior cadre. So, They are not free to put the actuals of the organisation. Some of the guys can do good but they are not given chances even if they hold more logical grip on Intrenal controls.:agree:
 

somashekar

Staff member
Super Moderator
#26
Part of the answer to the subject: Why are GOOD Internal Auditors so hard to find, lies in the fact that it is hard to find GOOD Trainers and GOOD Public speakers. Internal audit skills and techniques when imparted to GOOD Trainers and/or GOOD Public speakers, can get GOOD Internal auditors. Then counts the experience.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#27
This thread is very interesting :)

Why GOOD Internal Auditors are difficult to find ? I feel because in most organizations that I have seen the Internal Auditors in most cases are hand picked based on their work experience within the function and then an auditor pool is identified from all functions within that organization.

Often, I felt that the internal auditors are good technically but lack the probing skills or the personality to become an "overall good internal auditor".

Additionally, some auditors picked are also junior in their function with the result, they get easily bullied when they approach seniors.

Rarely, I have seen that an individual would approach to the MR or the Quality Manager and propose to be an Internal Auditor !
This can occur when there are different expectations of the auditing function in an organization:

1) The manager of the audit team is focused on organizational improvement and maintaining certification.

2) The management group is focused on maintaining certification.

3) Mid-level managers are most interested in the audit function perfoming process inspections for them; in this way the audit function helps them improve their processes, as they see it.

Each of these different types of interest reflect what is important to them: what would help them achieve their goals. The selection, resourcing, assigning, support, response to and degree of utilization of internal auditors will depend on which of these expectations "wins out."

If an organization wants a process inspector, then site people can be assigned, trained and supported to fill that role. If an organization is interested in "moving to the next level" by using the internal audit function to gain insights on what works and what isn't working, find value-added opportunities to breach silos and ask the tough question "Why are we doing it this way??" then the organization needs to act serious.

1) Create a position of sufficient stature to "legitimate" the work.
2) Recruit a professional that is philosophically committed to organizational development and improvement. This professional should have a wide enough background to apply the Man-Material-Machine-Environment principles to real life situations and fully understand the issues found, so as to accept no less than robust corrective action plans.
3) Treat the professional as a partner with upper management. Make it clear to middle managers that this person is fully supported and that he/she is to receive cooperation.

This is sounding rather like the manager of internal audits, isn't it? It could be. This person could have a team of auditors and do it part time, or work alone on a full time basis.

Here's the thing: ASQ salary surveys suggest that quality auditors are on an organizational level with quality engineers. When that is actually the case, you may find the job role becomes an employee magnet. You get what you ask for, and you get what you pay for.
 
J

Jeff Frost

#28
Jeff, a 2-day internal auditor training completion should NEVER equate to the concept of COMPETENCE for internal auditors. When I teach internal auditing, one of the analogies I make about the course is the classroom training of driver's education. You can have some indoctrination to the rules of the road, defensive driving, driving under inclement weather, etc., during a classroom exercise, but YOU will NEVER really develop your driving skills inside a classroom. One must take to the road, under different conditions, must learn from the mistakes, etc. in order to gain driving skills. Similarly, an internal auditor, after completing a classroom training should still undergo some mentoring, coaching, tutoring and on-the-job training before s/he is deemed "competent" as an internal auditor.

Good management system auditing requires a number of things:

intellectual ability
knowledge of business processes
knowledge of processes interfaces and systems
in-depth knowledge of audit criteria, including standards
ability to communicate effectively (the most important, imo)
proper coaching
plus all of the personal traits ISO 19011 refers to

To think that one can become a good auditor after attending a two-day training is naive. Training, as always, is just ONE COMPONENT of a competence building process. And competence is what we must seek.
Yes I agree that each bullet point you list should be present when the student starts the 2 day course but as you have observed they are not so the instructional model must accommodate. I start my education background teaching professionally as a SCUBA diving instructor and using your same expectation list a student should arrive at a SCUBA course with the following knowledge:

Archimedes' Principle of Buoyancy
Boyle’s Law
Dalton’s Law
Henry’s Law
Gravitational effect on tides and currents
Understanding of hyperbaric medicine
Operational characteristics of equipment in the aquatic environment

This list could go on if I wished to keep quoting form the ISO Standard on diving instruction but the key is to understand that no method of instruction should relay on the ideal student but must accommodate all students. In diving education, back in the 70’s, we understood that the instructional model must result in students exiting the course with the required competence so they could dive independent of their instructors. Why them do we not have the expectation that a student taking an internal audit course could not have the competence to perform audits independent of the instructor because they did not arrive meeting ISO 19011 guidance, is that not they are taking any course?
 
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#29
Why then, do we not have the expectation that a student taking an internal audit course could not have the competence to perform audits independent of the instructor because they did not arrive meeting ISO 19011 guidance, is that not they are taking any course?
Some people do have that expectation. This is, I believe, part of the RABQSA 'Competency Based' courses on auditing...the 'result' is that competencies are evaluated and the student given not just a 'pass/fail', but indications of where they are 'not yet competent'...:popcorn:
 

Sidney Vianna

Post Responsibly
Staff member
Admin
#30
One more reason that I can assign to poor outcome of IAs is poor quality of CB audits. I haven't seen CB auditors auditing 'Internal Auditing' as seriously as it's required to be done on their part and highlighted to the top management that, see here's what you need to seriously look at if you are set to achieve some ROI for implementing the QMS.
I touched on this aspect in this post on the Surveillance audits by lead auditors thread. Indeed it is a collective failure.
 
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