Open letters
INform invites comments, answers and further questions either relating to these letters or posing new topics. Make yourself heard and send us your feedback on the Q&A topic or any of those raised here or elsewhere. Alternatively, visit our new forum where you can join the live debate. Joining is easy and free. Simply go to http://forum.irca.org and click register.
Since I started working as a freelance auditor on behalf of two certification bodies in Egypt and overseas, I am always in trouble with the certification bodies. This is mainly because the auditee in most cases is looking for a ‘nice’ audit. This translates as no non-conformances, or even any strong recommendations. The problem, as far as I can see, is that the auditee is paying the audit fees to the certification body and the certification body wants to keep their customers. This is a bad equation. The auditee doesn’t want to appear to be in a bad situation in the front of the business owner or top management, so they are always ready to replace the certification body if the audit report or audit process doesn’t go exactly as she or he likes.
In my opinion, no real audit can take place as long as the customer directly selects and pays the certification body.
Atef Elmoghny
Cons engineer, lead auditor, Egypt
It’s time quality professionals made more effort to sell the real value of internal auditing and its potential to increase profitability to senior executives of companies. Can we blame the majority of executives for having little of no interest in internal audits when no one ever takes the trouble to explain how much value they can be if carried out effectively?
So come on the International Accreditation Forum, UKAS, third party bodies and the Chartered Quality Institute – start focusing on what is important start talking to the movers and shakers: internal auditors!
Sa Heed, via forum
Thanks a lot for thinking about India and Indian auditors. In my opinion IRCA should open a representative office in India. IRCA has representative offices in Korea (a small country compared to India) and various other countries, so why not in India?
IRCA should think about it seriously to speed up its services to Indian auditors.
Sanjay Gawade, via forum
I was much interested in the information published with regard to auditing top management, but I would appreciate it if you could tell me a few basic questions that an auditor could ask top management in order to assess their commitment to quality. I could not exactly gauge any actual questions I might use in a practical situation.
D Galpoththage, via forum
What do you think? What questions can auditors ask to assess top management commitment to quality? Have your say on our forums: http://forum.irca.org/ and we’ll publish your comments in the next edition of INform.
