The 7 Toughest Questions on the Internal Audit of ISO systems: ...and their very practical answers

After attending an ISO Internal Auditor Training Course, both the 'trained auditor' and the organisation expect, a competent auditor that can probe and add value to the system. Most times, newly trained auditors find out that they are unable to live up to these expectations right away and rightly so, because while they are trained, the have next to zero experience of actually conducting audits. Experience is a critical part of competence!

There however is a solution, a tool that is widely used by third party auditing bodies in developing their auditor resources, it is called Auditor Mentoring!

Unfortunately, not all newly trained auditors will have access to the luxury of an audit mentor and while they have lots of questions on the practicality of the audit process, the organisation is looking up to them for answers to the very things they need guidance about. This ebook was developed to be that companion mentor.

A request was sent out online for practitioners to ask their toughest questions on internal audits; some of those questions received are in here and all the answers are based on the knowledge and experience of the author, who is an active lead auditor, consultant and trainer with experience of auditing ISO management systems in the UK, Europe, The US, China and Africa. The answers here, which are practice focused, are one way to address the individual concerns raised, it does not claim to be the ONLY way to address the issues raised.

If you need a companion mentor in your auditing career, here it is!