7 – Qualities of an Auditor You Must Know

Any company that wishes to implement a Food Safety, Quality Management System, among others; it must go through periodic evaluation processes or internal and external audits, in order to be able to certify with authorized bodies.

The auditor, internal or external, must have certain qualities that seek continuous improvement and that are very useful for both the company and the consumer, ensuring their safety and welfare. Below are the seven qualities of an auditor that we must take into account to choose a good internal or external auditor:

Qualities of an Auditor

1. Empathy

Empathy is a fundamental quality for every auditor since it generates and maintains good communication. To empathize is to put yourself in the place of the other, to understand it according to your own way of thinking and feeling.

If an auditor does not consider how someone thinks or is feeling, if they do not know what that person cares about and what does not, it is very difficult to adequately communicate what their objectives are and what they are looking for with this process.

On the contrary, when considering all this, the possibility of good communication and that processes flow properly improves greatly. Do not forget that while we are auditing a system, it is managed by people.

2. Assertive Communication

More than being a transfer of information, communication is a circumstance of stimulation of internal experiences in another with our external behavior.

That is, when someone speaks to another person to share some concept, experience, or instruction with them, they do so based on their own ideas, experiences and objectives. When you seek to communicate this, what you do is not to transfer your ideas or experiences, but to stimulate or activate the interlocutor’s ideas, experiences and possibilities.

There is no transfer of information; the images of ideas do not float in the air from the mouth of the person who “sends” them to the ears of the person who “receives” them. What happens is that these sound waves are “perceived” by the listener and, based on their own experience (which is the only one that has available within them) interprets them.

Since I do not perceive your thoughts or yours, speaking as if we perceive them, would be a mistake that could lead to unintended consequences. It could even be a complete lack of understanding and understanding. This is how most communication problems arise and remain.

Now if we speak knowing that who sees us and / or listens does not “capture” our ideas, or emotions, but rather “connects” with their own, stimulated by us, we can then orient what we say and how we say it considering that. In this way, we can achieve what we seek with this communication much more easily and with a higher probability of success.

3. Knowledge and Experience

It is very important that the auditor knows backward and to the right, all the rules that apply to the system that you want to implement or audit in the company, and more important is that you have enough experience in the field to search for the most important points when auditing and interpreting them according to the reality that each company and the country where it is located.

If we take into account that in the hands of an auditor is the continuous improvement of a company and especially the welfare and life of millions of people who consume such product or service, not only does knowledge matter, it must have extensive experience in the market that allows you to anticipate the facts and be very objective when looking for critical points to be audited.

An experienced auditor knows the weaknesses and strengths of different types of companies and the state of their management system, that is if this is a recent implementation or is a mature system. This is the quality that really catapults continuous improvement.

4. Leadership and Teamwork

Many times the auditor does not work alone and is in charge of a team to which he must direct. For this, it is essential to know how to properly administer the personal and professional competencies of each one and be able to get the most out of them for the benefit of the company and the consumer.

5. Planning and Strategy

Whether the auditor works alone or as a team planning based on a previous strategy, which gives you the knowledge and experience, is essential for a successful audit. Remember that one of the biggest “enemies” that every auditor has is time, and therefore to go with an established action plan is key.

An experienced auditor knows that in spite of planning, there are often unforeseen events, and knowing how to adapt to new circumstances, without altering the final result, is part of his job.

6. Objectivity

Always a good auditor supports his decisions with facts and objective evidence by auditing the level of compliance of the system but not the person or people who handle a process. It is always said that an audit is an act of good faith, therefore it should not be seen as bad or the auditor as an “ogre”, on the contrary, a good audit is carried out in harmony and good treatment.

7. Professional Ethics

If we start from the fact that in the hands of an auditor there can be the lives of millions of people both inside and outside the company, ethics and morals is a non-negotiable quality of every good auditor. Under no circumstances can an auditor be a judge and part of the same process, that is, cannot implement and audit a system in the same company because it loses objectivity seeking a personal economic benefit and not the welfare of the company and its consumers.

In relation to everything we have said during the post, we cannot forget that the audit is a very effective way to see the real progress of your business, although it depends on how it is carried out, it will be more efficient or less. It is necessary to involve the entire organization and all the people who are part of the audit and are related to the Information Security Management System based on the ISO standards.

If the auditor has not enough sufficient knowledge, skills, or qualities, this will reduce the effectiveness of the audit. Also if the audited company does not understand the importance of the audit, no conclusions are obtained, then it’s also become an unproductive activity.

So not only you need to understand the whole audit process, but also the auditor should be well experienced and professional so that he could rectify all the errors and frauds.