Handling Change in the Lead Auditor

Any change in the lead auditor would result in changes related to the level of compliance expected from an organization's systems and processes.

At times the question is not just the level of compliance but the appropriateness of the manner in which compliance was being demonstrated by an organization till the point of change in the lead auditor.

Every person is different in terms of his or her viewpoint, outlook, perspective, understanding, expectations and articulation.

Auditors are no different on the above account.

With auditors the above aspect is compounded manifold due to the fact that they have extensive experience of seeing varied implementations of the standards for which conduct audits.

And when you are a lead auditor, you would tend to acquire an attitude also.

An attitude of "having seen it all and done it all".

Such an attitude will generally result in the person becoming rigid in terms of how easily and quickly he or she would want to understand and adopt alternative thought processes.

So if you are the one who is supposed to handle change in the lead auditor as the program lead for certification in your organization how should you go about it?

How do you handle change in the lead auditor?

Here are few points you should consider:

• Initiate discussion with the lead auditor to get introduced to him or her and also to understand the kind of person you will be dealing with
• Provide a broad overview of your organization's business context as well as salient aspects of the approach used for implementation of systems and processes in your organization
• Share any challenge or peculiarity in your compliance set-up. For example:
• You may  have a small remote site office 
• that doesn't have many of the standard controls and practises that are there in the main office (like there is no dedicated security staff  but a shared one).
• that doesn't have the usual support system from functional point of view (like there may be no team at that site to take care of process and compliance and such support is provided remotely by the team at the main office which may not really be that effective).
• Certain part of the business is outside the ambit of compliance requirements (which in turn would be a deciding factor for the scope of audit).
• Non-standard organization structure where the MR may not report into the CEO or the MD but someone lower down in the hierarchy (and this person would usually will not have the required competency for that position and is simply there due to his blind loyalty towards the master!).
• Other certifications the organization has that would support or/and strengthen the implementation of the standard for which the lead auditor will conduct audits.
• Organize a pre-audit or gap assessment by the lead auditor. This would help in following major ways:
• Better understand the auditor as a person so as to know his or her expectations as well as any idiosyncrasies that you will need to manage.
• Give the auditor chance to raise any fundamental issues upfront so that such issues won't come up later during the final audit which is a serious affair.
• Use the pre-audit as an opportunity to ensure the auditor fully understands your business context and is fully made aware of any challenges and constraints the organization is facing that would bear upon process and compliance in the organization.
• Close the observations and suggestions from the pre-audit before the final audit happens
• This may sound simple but is an extremely fine point to be duly taken care of as the closure has to be exactly in line with the new lead auditor's expectations and not how they used to be closed with the earlier lead auditor around.
• Even if all points do not get closed it is important the organization is able to demonstrate the seriousness of their intent and the fact that the extent of progress made was reasonable given the time available after the pre-audit and before the final audit.
• Get ready for show time
• Yes plan for, prepare for and get the final audit conducted.
• Hope for the best.
• But most importantly, expect the best if you indeed did manage the change in the lead auditor well!