I am often questioned how companies are training their internal auditors to be more effective. Since I am a full-time registrar auditor and not a consultant, I have to remind my clients that I (nor any registrar auditor) can NOT tell them what to do or how to go about making the changes that they are looking for. What I am allowed to do is to share what I consider best in class ideas/practices of what I have seen being done in industry today.
A common scenario that I see with many clients is a process where personnel are trained to be internal auditors and then they spend one to a couple of days per year performing internal audits for their organizations. There is limited to no updated training or discussions around what might work better or what tools the person might learn to utilize in conducting more effective audits. In one case, as I was reviewing an audit report for one company that was conducted by one of their quality engineers, it was obvious to me that the person was not putting much effort into the audit process. When questioned, the quality engineer admitted in front of the quality manager that they did not think that anyone would ever read the report! Yes, that was a…
