Introduction

This chapter explains some important features with regard to personal relationships. It encourages auditors to think about the need to establish the best possible relationships with the wide variety of individuals who could have a significant effect on the outcome of the audit. The success of such relationship-building is to move the perception of the relationship from a feeling of win:lose or lose:win to an expectation of win:win.

The lead auditor and the members of the audit team should start thinking about this important aspect of their work at the outset of the audit starting at the time of their initial planning. Only in this way will they increase the chances of achieving a win:win outcome in the relationships that they will have with the auditee and all of the personnel involved at every stage of the audit.

One prerequisite, an expectation for this chapter is that readers will already know the essential rules and techniques to establish good interpersonal relationships and be capable of practicing them. Another premise of this chapter is that the lead auditor and the audit team are competent auditors and therefore their findings and their audit conclusion have been arrived at in a defensible manner with full documentary evidence to support their findings, and that there is a rational logic leading up to their conclusions.

The nature of the critical personal relationship between the lead auditor and the team members is dealt with separately in Chapter 10.