Which is more painful: an audit or spending the holidays with Aunt Sally and her green Jell-O mold? Either way, your company audit still looms in your mind, but it shouldnt be that scary C quite the opposite. Besides, even Sally audits herself when she makes her mold, as she tests for thickness and taste. She just wants to improve.

Fix the Problem

So what are you going to do about your company audit? How about make an educated guess what the problem is, assign someone to fix it, and sit back and relaxfor another month or so? This is just another short-term solution.

Tackle the Audit Head On

Instead, why not tackle the audit head on, and kick its butt. A strange way to put it, maybe, but thats how I see an audit after attending an Internal Auditor Skills Class. Dont get me wrong, I still like managing by my own glorious opinion. But it got me thinking that maybe the attitude of just the facts, maam holds more water (and less hot air).

Close System Gaps

With role playing and actually writing up my own audit plans and reports, I got to see why unarguable evidence is so crucial to improving and even closing the gaps in a companys system. It becomes such a different world when you see firsthand all of the scenes.

Of course, Les Cornelius, Quality Assurance Coordinator for Lee BioSolutions, Inc., put it better than I could. Role playing and specific examples were helpful elements because they fully exercise the brain in its learning capacity and help internalize and retain the teachings

Manage with Unarguable Evidence

But I asked myself, why these teachings? Why do you need unarguable evidence, and why isnt our best guess good enough? Its because I saw that without unarguable evidence, we will manage by the seat of our pants and just argue back and forth our subjective opinions instead of discovering what is factually true. We will never accomplish anything with certainty, and we could do the wrong thing that could set you back even further.

Measure Performance Improvement

But as with anything, the proof is in the pudding, so what are the results? In the class, I saw numerous examples proving that managing by objective evidence leads to better and higher performance. And this leads to measurable improvement of the whole system. Simple yet complex. Complex yet simple.

Conduct Your Own Audit

In a nutshell, if youre only going to take one in the next few months to help improve your job and company, Id highly recommend an Internal Auditor Skills Class. You will come away with the knowledge to conduct an internal audit and improve your companys system. And, maybe more importantly, you can face your fears C and hopefully avoid Aunt Sallys mold.