Using communications skills for technical excellence

We teach new entrants to the internal audit profession to use words such as Kipling’s honest serving men to ensure open ended questions to help encourage auditees to share information with us.  The success and impact of any audit is dependent on good fact finding and information gathering at the outset of the audit.  

When undertaking audits, we all know that building rapport with the key stakeholders and those people who operate the activities around which the audit focuses is key.  

Those auditees who are open to audit are busy and have their day job so may welcome you but not feel they have much time for you; auditees who are defensive about audit may put up the shutters or try to fob the auditor off.

Time pressures and dealing with more difficult personalities are two of the reasons that some auditors revert back to email to communicate with auditees during an assignment. Email has its place, but a more personal interaction will help build the rapport, and through that facilitate better information gathering.  One risk of email interactions is that the auditor can become Columbo (yes the LAPD cigar smoking detective from the ‘70s and ‘80s) – repeatedly popping back for ‘just one more thing’.

Therefore we strive to meet in person (or skype or phone).  Such information gathering meetings are often a series of questions, and when they are planned and delivered well they should be a two way discussion rather than a dry Q&A session.

During such discussions, our who and how questions help garner insight from auditees. However, ‘why?’ can be an accusative word.  

Asking someone “why do you do that” may seem a straightforward question, but when you are asking someone why they perhaps undertake a particular task which is a key part of their job and they potentially do every day (sometimes many times a day), this can really feel personal.

So with apologies to Rudyard Kipling, I have retired one of the six serving men, to ensure more effective fact finding by focusing on building and maintaining rapport.