Collaborative Approach to Audit Processes

After years of conducting audits across various organizations, I've learned that sometimes the most challenging part isn't reviewing the documentation—it's managing difficult auditees. Here's what I've found works: Start with empathy: Remember that audits can feel threatening. Your auditee might be defensive because they're worried about their work being criticized. Acknowledge their expertise and make it clear you're there to help improve processes, not to find fault. Set clear expectations early: Explain your process, timeline, and exactly what you need. When people understand the 'why' behind your requests, they're more likely to cooperate. I always start with: "Here's what success looks like for both of us..." Document everything professionally: A difficult auditee might challenge your findings later. Keep detailed notes of all interactions and evidence requests. But avoid using confrontational language in your documentation—stay objective and fact-based. Build informal relationships: I've found that grabbing a coffee with the auditee before diving into work can transform the entire dynamic. The walls come down when they see you as a person, not just an auditor. Use the "feedback sandwich" technique: When discussing findings, start with something positive, address the issues, and then end with constructive suggestions. It helps maintain a collaborative atmosphere even during tough conversations. Remember: The goal isn't to win an argument—it's to help the organization improve. Sometimes the most resistant auditees become your biggest allies once they understand you're on their side. What strategies have you found effective in handling challenging audit situations? Share your experiences below! 👇 PS: Below pic is just for LinkedIn algorithm and not at all related to this post, don't consider it as a tip :D #InternalAudit #Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #IA #AuditBestPractices #CorporateGovernance

When the Auditor Becomes a Witch-Hunter: Let’s Talk About Auditing Best Practices As a food safety and quality professional, auditing is a regular and essential part of my work. A well-conducted audit is not about catching people out—it’s about continuous improvement, identifying gaps, and strengthening systems. But what happens when an audit feels more like a witch-hunt than a constructive process? Unfortunately, some auditors forget that they are partners in assurance—not prosecutors. When audits are driven by a desire to "find fault" rather than to build capacity, it can erode trust, discourage openness, and ultimately harm the food safety culture we all work so hard to maintain. Let me leave you with a few reminders on auditing best practices: 1️⃣ Approach with objectivity and respect Example: You can ask process owners how they do their job instead of just lurking around and looking for what is wrong. This makes staff members feel seen, heard and they can open up about minor/major issues they have been managing—creating a chance to improve processes without fear. 2️⃣Focus on systems, not individuals Example: Instead of blaming a cleaner for missing a spot during pre-operation checks, a great auditor asked, “What does the cleaning verification process look like?” That incident led to improving the checklist, retraining staff, and adding clearer visual aids. 3️⃣Encourage transparency over perfection Example: A QA team admitted during an audit that their calibration schedule had slipped by a few days. Because they were honest, the auditor helped them strengthen their tracking system—without penalizing them for the lapse. 4️⃣Communicate clearly and constructively Example: Rather than using vague terms like "non-compliance spotted," a good auditor said, “Your allergen control procedure is in place, but signage is missing on two containers—let’s look at how to fix that.” That helped the team act quickly and learn from the situation. 5️⃣Document findings fairly and provide opportunities for corrective action Example: A fair auditor noted a minor deviation as an observation instead of a non-conformance, acknowledging that corrective action was already underway. That kind of balanced reporting builds trust and maintains morale. To my fellow professionals—whether you’re conducting or receiving audits—let’s commit to audits that empower, not intimidate. Have you ever experienced an audit that felt like a witch-hunt? How did you handle it? #ChidinmaEzinneOchulor #FoodSafety #QualityAssurance #Audit #ContinuousImprovement #Leadership #QMS #FoodIndustry

Making quality audits successful requires proper planning, execution, communication, and follow-up. A successful audit is not just about finding nonconformities but about adding value, improving processes, and building trust. Here’s a structured approach: --- 🔹 1. Pre-Audit Preparation Define Objectives: Clarify whether the audit is for compliance, improvement, certification, or risk reduction. Plan the Audit: Create an audit plan with scope, criteria, schedule, and areas to be covered. Know the Standards: Be well-versed in ISO standards, organizational procedures, and customer requirements. Select Competent Auditors: Ensure auditors are trained, objective, and independent from the process being audited. Communicate in Advance: Share audit schedules and expectations with auditees to reduce resistance and anxiety. --- 🔹 2. Audit Execution Start with Opening Meeting: Explain the purpose, scope, methodology, and expected outcome. Use Evidence-Based Approach: Verify compliance through records, observations, and interviews rather than assumptions. Ask Open-Ended Questions: Encourage discussion instead of “yes/no” answers. Observe Processes in Action: Don’t just check documents—see how the process is actually performed. Maintain Professionalism: Be objective, respectful, and supportive, not fault-finding. --- 🔹 3. Reporting Highlight Strengths as well as Gaps: Recognize good practices along with nonconformities. Be Clear and Specific: Report findings with evidence, not opinions. Classify Issues: Separate major, minor nonconformities, and opportunities for improvement. Provide Actionable Recommendations: Suggest practical improvements aligned with business goals. --- 🔹 4. Post-Audit Follow-up Closing Meeting: Present findings openly, answer questions, and agree on next steps. Corrective Action Tracking: Ensure issues are addressed with root cause analysis, corrective actions, and timelines. Verify Effectiveness: Re-check whether corrective actions solved the problem, not just closed the paperwork. Continuous Improvement: Use audit results as input for management reviews and strategic planning. --- 🔹 5. Best Practices for Successful Quality Audits ✅ Treat audits as a value-adding activity rather than fault-finding. ✅ Build a collaborative relationship between auditors and auditees. ✅ Use risk-based thinking—focus more on critical processes. ✅ Apply technology (audit software, digital checklists, data analytics) for efficiency. ✅ Promote a culture of quality where employees see audits as learning, not punishment.

Dear IT Auditors, ITGC in Cloud-Native Teams Many organizations have embraced cloud platforms like AWS and Azure, but very few know how to audit IT General Controls (ITGCs) in a cloud-native environment. Traditional ITGC testing relied on on-premises systems, familiar roles, and predictable evidence. Cloud-native teams change the rules. When developers can spin up resources in minutes and infrastructure is managed as code, how do you validate that controls exist and work without slowing the business down? That’s where modern IT audit practices come in. 📌 Access Management: Instead of static AD groups, cloud environments use identity and access management (IAM) policies. You need to review policies, roles, and entitlements at scale. Focus on least privilege, segregation of duties, and rotation of credentials. 📌 Change Management: Cloud-native teams use pipelines like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Azure DevOps. Your role is to confirm that code changes to infrastructure or applications follow peer review, approval, and automated testing. Ask: Can the organization trace who made changes and when? 📌 Operations Controls: Logs, alerts, and monitoring are built into cloud platforms. The test isn’t whether logs exist—it’s whether logs are retained, reviewed, and tied to incident response. Look at CloudTrail in AWS or Activity Logs in Azure and test for completeness and retention. 📌 Evidence Collection: Screenshots aren’t enough. Cloud platforms produce system-generated evidence like JSON files, configuration exports, and automated compliance scans. As an auditor, you should guide teams to provide structured evidence that regulators and executives trust. 📌 Collaboration with DevOps: The biggest shift is cultural. IT auditors can’t audit cloud-native teams with a checklist designed for 2005. You need to understand the language of developers, containers, and automation, then translate it into assurance terms. Collaboration builds trust, and trust drives better controls. Cloud adoption is accelerating. The question for auditors is simple: are you testing ITGCs the old way, or are you building assurance into the way cloud teams actually work? #ITAudit #CloudAudit #ITGC #AWS #Azure #DevOps #Assurance #RiskManagement #CyberSecurityAudit #GRC #InternalAudit

Where Internal Audit Teams Stagnate and Where They Thrive Status Quo: Hiring approach is to just focus on Big4 CPAs Thrive: Hiring approach focuses on documenting required competencies and skills, while engaging the entire Internal Audit team in proactive strategies to identify and attract new talent. Status Quo: The internal audit risk assessment is performed solely by the CAE and one or two key team leaders. Thrive: Maintain a documented relationship strategy executed by experienced seniors, managers, and the internal audit leadership team to foster ongoing dialogue with key business leaders one or two levels below the C-Suite. Then leverage these insights as key drivers in the Internal Audit Risk Assessment process. Status Quo: Develops audit programs based on available company documents, policies, procedures, and general assumptions about how the process should work. Thrive: Develops audit programs that evaluate both control design and operating effectiveness, while leveraging external perspectives and subject matter expertise to incorporate modern practices and benchmark against industry standards. Status Quo: Focused solely on completing audits and routine tasks. Thrive: Focused on not just completing their core duties, but working together to identify and tackle 1-2 major challenges facing the company. Status Quo: Implement an audit management solution, leave it unchanged after setup, and use as is. Thrive: Implement a purpose-built audit management solution and establish a process for team adoption and continuous improvement through additional team training and proactive identification of new features to enhance methodology. Status Quo: Internal Audit feedback occurs only during formal performance reviews. Thrive: Feedback is continuous, shared after key meetings, following project completions, and during weekly 1:1s. Status Quo: One-on-one meetings focus mainly on project status updates of the individual. Thrive: One-on-one meetings focus on personal well-being, discussing what's happening at home, the coachee's quarterly and annual goals, and providing coaching on how to achieve them. Status Quo: Team meetings focus solely on reviewing completed work, discussing upcoming tasks, and tracking deadlines. Thrive: Team meetings also celebrate individual achievements, may feature guest speakers from across the business, discuss company strategy and current events, and continuously reinforce the team's goals, objectives, mission, values, and culture. Thriving internal audit teams don't need to necessarily implement or have all of these examples in place. However, they do share key traits: they're proactive, people-focused, willing to challenge industry traditions, and eager to adopt as many of these practices as possible.

Why #internalaudit is an investment in the future rather than a mere cost? A recent Internal Audit(IA) case study: We have been working with a client ABC Pvt Ltd (Name changed) as their internal auditors. The client earlier had a CA firm who were doing a very traditional internal audit which only focused on vouching, transactional accuracy and financial statements closure, etc. We proposed to do a risk-based internal audit, and it took quite some time to explain the difference to the management and get their consensus. Initial years of audit were quite challenging because the management was used to a way of audit and a lot of questions we used to ask them about risk, implications used to irk them. There was a lot of resistance to implementing new suggestions from the IA team. Though the board was appreciative of the new suggestions coming up, the management was apprehensive about implementing them. Sometimes, our big IA reports used to feel a mere document without implementation of the same. We did a few things differently and started seeing results: 1. We took the accounts team into confidence and explained the intent of the audit. We assured them that the IA is not an act of policing but to bring effective controls in the company. 2. We started focusing on the statutory non-compliance and identified the root cause of the issues. We started tackling the root cause. The root cause in majority of the cases were the knowledge of staff at the invoice processing level regarding TDS and GST. 3. We asked the accounts team to write emails to us as and when they encountered technical queries and tried to solve it the same day. This approach helped us to build preventive checks than detective checks. 4. With every IA report, we discussed the recommendations and asked the teams whether the same can be implemented. So, it started becoming a collaborative effort than a one-way effort. 5. The management started trusting us more with every report and started acting on our recommendations diligently. 6. We started appreciating the team for improvements rather than only looking at the observations. When we presented the report recently, we found that majority of the statutory compliance issues were cleared from its root and the processes eventually had become robust enough to find the issues and plug it before the month-end book closure procedure. This only makes us happier. The goal is not to issue a fat IA report but to eventually aid the companies towards: 1. Effective and efficient processes that are not person-dependent 2. Plug revenue leakage loopholes 3. Highly compliant with the governing regulations 4. Build a strong culture of compliance and corporate governance. This is a case study that makes us happy to be a small part of making companies get better and better :) Ashwini Magod Nitesh MN Madan Hemaraju #internalaudit #process #risk #corporategovernance #financemanager #cfo #founder #startup #ca #charteredaccountant

🏗️ Struggling with uncooperative stakeholders during construction project audits? Here's a real-life scenario and how to tackle it effectively: 👉 Picture yourself leading a project management team for a large-scale construction project. During a scheduled audit, one of the subcontractors, let's call them XYZ Construction, appears hesitant to provide crucial documentation and is defensive when questioned about project timelines and quality control measures. ✅ Strategy: Build Rapport: Start by establishing a positive relationship with the XYZ Construction team before the audit. Engage in informal conversations to understand their perspective and concerns. Clear Communication: Clearly communicate the purpose of the audit to XYZ Construction, emphasizing the importance of their cooperation in ensuring project success and client satisfaction. Active Listening: During the audit, actively listen to XYZ Construction's concerns and feedback. Address any misunderstandings or apprehensions they may have about the audit process. Educate on Benefits: Highlight the benefits of the audit in terms of ensuring quality standards, adhering to project timelines, and ultimately delivering a successful project outcome. Set Expectations: Set clear expectations regarding the documentation and information required from XYZ Construction for the audit. Ensure they understand their role and responsibilities in facilitating the process. Empower Engagement: Encourage XYZ Construction to actively participate in the audit by providing insights into their construction processes, identifying potential challenges, and suggesting solutions. Focus on Solutions: Adopt a collaborative approach to address any issues or discrepancies uncovered during the audit. Work together with XYZ Construction to find practical solutions that align with project objectives. Flexibility: Be flexible with the audit schedule and accommodate any reasonable requests from XYZ Construction to ensure minimal disruption to their ongoing work on the project. Maintain Professionalism: Maintain a professional demeanor throughout the audit process, even if faced with resistance or pushback from XYZ Construction. Focus on resolving issues constructively and professionally. Follow-Up: After the audit, provide XYZ Construction with clear feedback on areas for improvement and any follow-up actions required. Stay engaged with them to ensure timely implementation of corrective measures. By implementing these strategies, you can foster cooperation from subcontractors like XYZ Construction and ensure the smooth execution of construction projects, meeting quality standards and client expectations. 👷 Let's transform audit challenges into opportunities for collaboration and project success! #ConstructionProjectManagement #QualityAudit #StakeholderCooperation #ProjectSuccess #Teamwork #ConstructionIndustry #Leadership #ProblemSolving #BusinessStrategy #ProfessionalDevelopment 🏆

Audit or assurance process walkthroughs with core team members are essential because they: 1. Promote Understanding: Walkthroughs ensure that auditors and assurance teams fully understand the process from those who know it best. Core team members can explain intricate details, variations, and operational nuances that might not be documented. 2. Validate Process Accuracy: Direct discussions help verify that documented processes align with real-world practices. This minimizes gaps between what's on paper and actual execution, enhancing the audit's relevance. 3. Identify Potential Risks and Controls: Core team members can provide insights into areas where risks arise and how controls are applied. This helps in assessing the effectiveness of controls, identifying gaps, and finding areas for improvement. 4. Foster Collaboration: Involving core team members promotes transparency and collaboration. It builds a sense of joint accountability for process improvements and highlights the importance of control ownership across teams. 5. Highlight Best Practices and Areas for Improvement: Walkthroughs often reveal not only gaps but also strong practices within the team. These can be acknowledged, shared, and scaled across other processes or departments for broader benefits. Regular walkthroughs are therefore valuable, both for enhancing audit quality and building a culture of continuous improvement and compliance across the organization. Anup Singh, CISA® #Audit #Assurance #ProcessImprovement #RiskManagement #ControlEffectiveness #Collaboration #InternalAudit #Compliance #ProcessWalkthrough #Linkedin #ContinuousImprovement #BestPractices #OperationalExcellence LinkedIn LinkedIn for Learning LinkedIn Guide to Creating

🚨 New Article Alert: Connected Assurance: Mapping Your Way Out of Corporate India’s Control Chaos🚨 Does Corporate India have a controls and assurance crisis? The sheer volume of risk and assurance activities—risk management, compliance, cybersecurity, internal audit—has created an overload of duplicated efforts and gaps that no one even knows about. It’s time to face the reality: if we don’t embrace a connected approach to risk and assurance, we’re headed for trouble. In my latest article, "Connected Assurance: Mapping Your Way Out of Corporate India’s Control Chaos," I dive into the vital role of assurance mapping, a tool with over 20 years of history that’s more relevant now than ever. I first learned about it during a 2011 training with @James Paterson (https://lnkd.in/gyjhSFtc) for IIA UK, and it’s a proven solution to cut through the chaos and create a coordinated approach to risk assurance. With the new IIA Standard 9.5 emphasizing collaboration and coordination, the need for an active assurance map is undeniable. The article also references insights from Tom O'Reilly on assurance mapping for AuditBoard (https://lnkd.in/gVWa5J6D) and a recent announcement by Richard Chambers about his upcoming book, Connected Risk: Conquering the Perilous Risk Exposure Gap (https://lnkd.in/gSYwBMSc). Their perspectives make it clear: we can no longer afford to work in silos. I also call out on the 10 power skills your audit team needs to succeed with assurance mapping and make it a sustainable practice. From strategic communication to building trust with a touch of skepticism, these skills will help you not just survive the control chaos but thrive in it. 💬 Call to Action: Read the article, share your experiences with assurance mapping in the comments, and spread the word to anyone struggling with controls and assurance overload. Let’s tackle this crisis head. The future of risk is connected — don’t be left behind! #TheEvolvingAuditor #AssuranceMapping #ConnectedRisk #ControlCrisis #AuditLeadership #CorporateIndia #RiskManagement #PowerSkills #AuditBoard #RichardChambers #TomOReilly #JamesPaterson #IIAStandards

Consistent efforts, even seemingly small ones, can significantly improve how we handle audits and other situations that may become contentious. Start by truly listening. Give your full attention, avoid interrupting, and ask questions that show you’re engaged and seeking better understanding. This builds trust and can lead to greater transparency in getting to the real issues. Next, practice empathy by considering the other person’s perspective, especially when discussing sensitive audit findings. Ease tensions by acknowledging their concerns and lead the discussion in a more collaborative direction. Lastly, focus on clear, respectful communication. When giving feedback, be direct but thoughtful, without causing unnecessary friction. Clearly explain the deficiency and associated risks. Have you incorporated these practices into your interactions? Any others you would add? Share your tips and experiences in the comments. I'd love to learn about your approach as an auditor or experiences you've had as an auditee. #emotionalintelligence #auditing #qualityassurance