I know how much tension there is the day of your ISO audit.  Your success in maintaining this certification, and any customer requirements that depend on it, hinges on what will happen in the following few days.

The most customer-facing member of the system is the auditor. Also, the auditor is the source of most of the variability in the system not only because of level of competence, but because everyone comes into the job with a different amount of experience and ability, and the quality of your audit depends on it.  Add to that the fact that there are many different requirements for the job, not all of which are openly stated.

Wouldn’t you like to know what is going on in the mind of the auditor? Well, for starters, here are five things that your ISO auditor won’t tell you as they sit down across from you for the opening meeting.

I’m overscheduled and exhausted

This one is fairly obvious because most of the auditors actually will tell you, and they will whine about it. Auditing is seasonal. The clients tend to want their audits in the period between April and November. Part of the reason for this is built into the system, since you’re supposed to have one audit per calendar year, and so year-end and year-beginning dates work against you because sometimes want to reschedule an audit and can’t.

So if you are a contract auditor like me, most of your annual income is earned in that time period, and so you do want to make hay when the sun shines, and accept a lot of jobs when you can.

If you are an auditor that is an employee of the registrar, the situation is even worse. The auditors are given an efficiency rating, which is “billable days per month” and that results in overscheduling to pack the most audit-days into the auditor’s schedule.  They work those people as much as they can, since they are the means of production.

Also, during years where there are a lot of re-certifications, and years like last year when everybody transitioned to the 2015 standard, the situation is worse, because the audits are longer. That reduces the travel, in a way, but means that the registrars and auditors have to cram more audit days into a given month.

In your cushy corporate job, when you have to travel someplace, many companies will let you travel during the day, thus getting a day out of the office. If the auditor does that, they lose one day of potential income.  So, most of these auditors travel at night, drag into the hotel late, and are not in great shape by 7 AM when the opening meeting is supposed to start.

So if that auditor forgets your name, or where he or she is, or shows up with his shirt inside out (which I have done) that’s why.

I’m not supposed to write my report during the audit

The ISO Auditing standard, 19011,  is supposed to ensure that the audits are conducted fairly, and a given time is allotted for each audit, which is supposed to be devoted to “auditing”.  What that means is that “reporting activities,” as well as recording non-conformances, as well as lunch, are theoretically considered “offsite time”.

This has been an area of scrutiny by ANAB and the other bodies that audit the registrars. The audit schedule needs to reflect 8 hours per day of “auditing” and time needs to be added to the audit if necessary.

The auditors usually get paid some offsite time for this purpose. However, there is some incentive for the auditors to try to complete their reports during the audit, particularly if they have multiple audits in the same week, and the offsite time is usually not enough to actually complete the reporting in the desired time frame.

The situation in Aerospace illustrates this a lot. For awhile there was a big shortage of AS auditors. If you take the number of required audit days from all of the audits, plus the amount of allotted paperwork time and divide it by the number of available auditors,  it was pretty clear that there is some fudging of this, if the high level data is correct. This situation may still be going on.

The registrars do attempt to control this during witness audits, and also the auditors themselves are subject to being audited. The auditor’s schedules are reviewed by the technical committee to confirm the correct amount of time is being spent “auditing”.

p.s. You’re also not supposed to check your email, look at your calendar, field phone calls from the technical committee, make your massage appointment, or do any of a dozen other things that sometimes happen rather than “auditing”.

Also “breaks” are a bit of a gray area, since they are not mentioned in the auditing standard. I don’t usually take any, but I have had clients request them during the audit.

Writing Non-Conformances costs me money.

Here is  how it works: When an auditor writes a non-conformance, it starts a chain reaction. The auditor has to document it in the registrar’s system, if there is one. Then, when the client responds with an action plan, the auditor has to review it and “accept it” in the system (the registrars have systems to capture all of this and record it). Or, if the auditee does not do a good job of documentation, the auditor flunks it and sends it back to the auditee for revisions. When the next audit rolls around, they further have to review non-conformances for effectiveness.  This may mean (theoretically) adding time to the audit since this can’t, according to the rules,  be done during “audit time.”

All of these reviews and follow ups take place when the auditors would rather be having Auditor Miller Time, or going to the next audit.

For major non-conformances, the auditor is supposed to go back to the client within 90 days to review whether the corrective action was effective.  They have to do the travel, and it is likely that they will have to do rescheduling or cancellation of some other job, and even though they may charge a half day for this, they can’t work that day so their income is directly affected.

So, there is an incentive for the auditor to “soft grade” and that does reduce the amount of integrity in the system. It also makes it likely that when some different auditor that plays it more straight comes in, there will be a blow up, because the client is “under-audited.”

I am often that auditor, and that happens about three times a year, and it causes me audit management problems when it does because I have a chance to lose my audience. No one likes to have the book thrown at them when they have been going along without any problems for a long time.

The Registrars mainly care about my report

From the registrar’s point of view,  the “product” is “ISO Registration Services.” In order to provide this, they need to have objective evidence and documents required by the certifying bodies that certify them, mostly ANAB in North America that audits the registrars. So they hire me, the auditor, to prepare the documents.

So they are 99% focused on the report, and you can’t blame them. To them, that is the “product”.  Most of the time, at least with me, they go through it with a lot of scrutiny and “reject” it if I have typos, or the dates aren’t correct or if it is incomplete somehow. This costs me Miller Time but I understand that it is important and I am usually OK to have the second set of eyes if it is done professionally. My strength is not the reporting.

However, as the customers will tell you, part of the value of the audit is the actual way in which the auditor interacts with the auditee, answers questions, conducts interviews in a professional manner, and other non-technical things that the auditor does that makes the customers happier with the process.

In other words, the customers want the auditor to not be a jerk.

Never, either  in the certification training, the annual training for the registrars, my experience as an audit trainee going out with experienced auditors, nor at any other time, have the registrars given me any training about being public facing and conducting the audit in a way that makes the client appreciate it, even if they don’t “like it.”

Recently, with the recent update of the Auditing Standard, there has been the initiation of “customer surveys” or other feedback to try to understand how much of an issue this is for the registrar.  So, this is slowly changing, I think.

Also there is a weeding-out mechanism, which is that the auditee has the ability to prematurely terminate the audit at any time (the auditor is supposed to remind you of this in the opening meeting). So if any of the above gets too far out of hand, the auditor shows up loaded, the auditor shows up and does harassing, or the auditor is off the chain in some other way, the auditee can pull the plug and any time I have ever heard of this happening, the registrar has bent over backward to solve the problems.

I’m Sick

Because of travel, poor diet,  stress, limited access to health care, and sleep deprivation, your auditor is quite likely to have one or more chronic medical conditions.

 Add to this the fact that these people tend to be a little older than the normal population, and it is quite likely that your auditor on a given day is miserable. He or she may go so far as to tell you, because sometimes they also whine about that.

It doesn’t necessarily help the situation to drop a box of donuts or a pizza on the table at some time during the audit, but you are appealing to his or her comfort, which is not a terrible thing to do, and I know you mean well.

This affects the quality of the audit in a variety of ways. It limits the number of possible interviewees. It may decrease his or her mobility. It may affect their hearing and thinking ability. It may even require them to take medications that may lead to a safety issue.

If, like me, your auditor is a contract worker, they may not be able to participate in health monitoring or improvement programs sponsored by the registrar, even if one existed.  This is not even on the registrar’s radar for the most part.  P.S. Some auditors try to self medicate by “auditor Miller Time” and I can also  see where this would also get out of hand if you let it.

I try to make up for it with the Auditor Workout Program, which I will post at some point. I find I have a physical and emotional need to do this to  keep from falling apart  into a pile of pork chops right after the closing meeting like that car in the Blues Brothers.

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