Two Assignments, One Auditor Short
You manage the internal audit programme for a 900-person plant with four auditors. Two assignments are on this year's draft schedule. (1) Maintenance planning and scheduling: previously owned by Auditor A, who transferred into quality seven months ago and wrote the current planning procedure. (2) Welding and weld inspection: Auditor B is the only staff auditor with the required visual-weld competence, and B's brother-in-law is the welding supervisor. Both audits are needed for this year's coverage and the certification body's surveillance is in five months. An external quote for the welding audit is USD 4,800; USD 2,000 remains in the contract-audit budget line, and training another auditor to weld-inspection competence takes about nine months.
1. Assign both audits. Justify each decision against independence, objectivity and competence.
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Maintenance audit - Auditor A is disqualified from leading it.
- A wrote the procedure under audit and ran the process until seven months ago. Auditing your own work is the clearest independence breach; ISO 9001:2015 clause 9.2.2 c) requires objectivity and impartiality, and the long-standing audit principle is that auditors do not audit their own work. Seven months is not 'long enough' by default - assess it, do not assume it.
- Workable options: assign a different auditor, with A available strictly as a technical guide (explains the process, does not gather evidence, does not conclude); defer with documented risk acceptance if no competent alternative exists. If A is used as a guide, note the role in the report so readers know A had no say in findings.
Welding audit - competence and independence collide; independence wins on the conclusion, competence cannot be waived.
- B's relationship with the welding supervisor is a self-interest/familiarity threat to objectivity, and the supervisor is likely a key interviewee and evidence owner. B leading welding conclusions is not defensible.
- The nine-month training route cannot meet this year's coverage. So the realistic option is a contracted or cross-site qualified auditor leading the welding audit, with B either excluded or used as a second pair of hands on non-welding elements under independent review.
- Funding: the quote exceeds the USD 2,000 remaining, so this is a resourcing decision to escalate, not a technical one to compromise. Ask for the shortfall, or trade scope/time with the certification body, or borrow a qualified auditor from a sister site.
Document the rationale and the approval for each assignment in the audit plan.
2. What must be recorded and communicated before either audit starts, and to whom?
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Recorded:
- Signed conflict-of-interest / impartiality declarations from A and B, dated before fieldwork.
- The specific threat identified for each (own work; family relationship), the safeguard chosen, and who approved it.
- Any role limits in the audit plan: A as technical guide only; B excluded from welding conclusions or restricted to specified non-welding elements with independent review of findings.
- The resourcing decision for the external welding auditor, including cost approval.
Communicated:
- To the audit client/top management: the independence constraint and its cost or coverage consequence, in plain risk terms - this is a programme-level risk acceptance decision, not an auditor's private workaround.
- To the auditees: who is auditing and any advisory role, so no one is surprised in the report.
- To the certification body only if relevant to the programme's scope or a required notification; do not over-disclose internal personnel matters.
Test of a good safeguard: would an outsider reading the plan and the report conclude the findings are independent? If the safeguard depends on A or B 'being professional about it', it is not a safeguard.