A friend of mine heard this one and passed it on to me:
Auditors are those who get to the battlefield after the war is over and stab the wounded.
I wondered if this was original, so I googled it, and found this post by Christel Fouche. I expected it to be funny, but it was rather serious; no reference to the quote above appeared in the post–it’s all about auditing standards and whatnot. I think she missed an opportunity.
Back to the quote. It rings with some truth, but these thoughts came to mind:
- If the soldiers had listened to the auditors in the first place (or perhaps followed their policies and procedures), the battle may not have occurred, or the casualties would be much more limited.
- The stabs are more like surgical incisions–they are intended to be helpful and add healing, and are not meant to cause further pain.
- Sometimes the auditors have to go out on the battlefield (and risk their own necks) because otherwise, the wounded are gathered up and hidden in a mass grave. Auditors merely insist the dead are acknowledged, given a proper burial, and remembered.
What do you think?
ITauditSecurity 
Hi
Thank you for referring to my article. I think the approach here from a safety, health, environmental & quality point of view is that the “old” form of auditing, i.e. trying to stab the client when busy auditing them – has long since dissappeared. Auditors need to see themselves as part of the process of continually improving the clients’ system. Auditors should not be “against” the client – they are there to assist the client based on their specialist knowledge. Unfortunately most auditors are still using the “battlefield” approach. Regards Christel.
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Christel,
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had the pleasure of working in two companies where auditors were not despised. One company truly appreciated auditors, the other worked with them fairly well.
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