• The auditors may not be well prepared: At the beginning of a year, when the audit dates are published, auditors promise themselves to be well prepared for the audit and also to execute it differently from that of last year. But as the audit dates grow closer, little do they realize that they aren’t well prepared for the audit. When the audit is conducted for the first time, it generally turns out to be quite difficult as there is no checklist and they may not have adequate documents on the basis of which the audit should be conducted. One must carefully prepare for an audit by allotting time in your work schedule for preparation.
• Handling difficult auditees: To get the best out of any audit, the auditor must interact with the owner of the process while reviewing his processes and procedures. In some cases, you may come across auditees who constantly exhibit difficult behavior. They may keep on behaving rudely with you, and neither will be interested in answering your questions nor in the audit itself. In such cases, the audit should be stopped immediately and the audit program manager, the auditee’s supervisor, or the company president should be notified. There is no benefit from an audit process where the situation is aggressive.
• Preparation and Announcement of audit reports- An auditor must try to publish an audit report within one week of the internal audit has been performed. The audit report must be generated to communicate audit findings to managers so that they can make the appropriate decision. A standardized audit report must be created that can be used by all the auditors. These audit reports can be in the form of “fill in the blanks”. An auditor should make sure not to create a report with checklists on it as checklists do not exhibit proper information. The preparation of audit reports is one of the hectic tasks involved in the audit processes, as it must be as per the regulations.
