Did you just roll your eyes at me again?
Oh, if I had a nickel…
My eldest daughter is a master at technically complying with my requests, but letting her displeasure be known by her tone and body language.
We auditors are pretty adept at snarky BS ourselves, but some of us unwisely put our ‘tudes in writing! Even a fifteen-year-old knows not to do that!
How would it feel to you?
I feel dissed (and pissed!) when my daughter gives me that Mom, you are so stupid! look.
And we all know how it feels to be called stupid. It doesn’t feel good AT ALL.
So why do we call our beloved auditees “stupid” in our audit report?
Why do we say the work they prepared is weak, poor or inadequate? How would you like to see those words applied to your work in your annual performance evaluation? You’d lose your cool in a hurry, right?
Stop using these words right away!
Avoid these words lest your auditee lose their cool:
- Poor
- Weak
- Inadequate
- Insufficient
- Failure
- Loser
These bad boys are usually attached to vague terms an auditor can’t tie to evidence:
- Supervision
- Oversight
- Monitoring
Consider these often-used auditor combos: ‘inadequate supervision’ or ‘failure to oversee.’ Did you feel that eye roll?
What do I replace them with?
Just say what is so. Instead of ‘inadequate supervision,’ use ‘did not review reports before submission.’ Replace ‘failure to oversee’ with ‘did not review reports before submission.’
Yes, I repeated that same solution twice to make two points!
First, those mean words attached to vague words mean nothing, nada, bupkis and you are insulting the auditee to boot. In its place, I could have used just about any other more concrete word to improve its tone.
Secondly, the word ‘review’ is a more specific and concrete word than the meaningless words ‘supervise’ and ‘oversee.’ In addition, ‘review’ is infinitely more auditable/verifiable when you follow-up on your finding.
Watch that tone!
So, stop it. Really. Stop it. Otherwise, I’m taking away your phone.
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