In my experiences, I often found many failures in conducting the audit more on the hesitate or laziness of the auditor to verify their findings with the auditee. The reasons are vary as below:
- Have no idea about it due to lack of training,
- Hesitate to do due to lack of confident, and
- Feeling knows everything due to superior personality.
Those reasons come up because the auditors has a traditional perspective about the audit process. They were thinking that audit is the activity to check and find the weaknesses of the business process, therefore the verification process would not necessary be required.
It is absolutely wrong !
I quote clause 4.f of ISO 19011:2011 about guidelines for auditing management systems,
It is absolutely wrong !
I quote clause 4.f of ISO 19011:2011 about guidelines for auditing management systems,
3.1 audit
systematic, independent and documented process for obtaining audit evidence (3.3) and evaluating it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria (3.2) are fulfilled.
3.2 audit criteria
set of policies, procedures or requirements used as a reference against which audit evidence (3.3) is compared.
3.3 audit evidence
records, statements of fact or other information which are relevant to the audit criteria (3.2) and verifiable.
Audit by the definition then is part of continuous improvement process within organization, it’s not the way to blame someone or auditee for any reasons.
In my opinion, the verification process will protect the auditor other than protect the auditee. Because when the auditee asked back to the auditor to prove their claim, then it would be a disaster, it could end up with a total failure of the audit taken. When it is happen, the auditor will loose their credibility.
And for me, this principle is not applied to audit process only but applicable in general practices as well.
In my opinion, the verification process will protect the auditor other than protect the auditee. Because when the auditee asked back to the auditor to prove their claim, then it would be a disaster, it could end up with a total failure of the audit taken. When it is happen, the auditor will loose their credibility.
And for me, this principle is not applied to audit process only but applicable in general practices as well.