The Six Biggest Relationship Mistakes Internal Auditors Make

We all know that internal auditors play a unique and complex role at the organizations where they work. They must serve many constituencies and customers, including the operating units they audit, the board and senior managers they report to, not to mention fellow employees, consumers, regulators, and citizens at large who may have a vested interest in the work they do. Navigating these waters is tricky business, but building solid relationships within the business can help internal auditors not only survive, but thrive.

We recently conducted an informal poll, where we asked the question: “How important are relationships to the success of internal audit?” After 337 votes were counted, 95 percent said that such relationships were either critical (77 percent) or important (18 percent). The results aren’t surprising, but they underscore just how important relationship building is to achieving success as an internal auditor.

“We can audit anything, even with poor relations with the client area. But we can only really add value, make a positive difference, move beyond a ‘tick box,’ and deliver proper insight when we have effective relationships,” says John Chesshire, principal at JC Audit Training.

It makes sense. Internal auditors have talked for a long time about wanting a seat at the table and wanting to be considered as trusted advisors. But those things will only happen when internal auditors build the right relationships with the right people at the right time (in addition to doing the hard work to deserve such distinctions.) Those achievements involve trust and credibility, which typically only come from having strong, mutually respectful relationships.

“I don’t know how we can effectively do our jobs if we don’t build relationships based on trust and respect with our clients and the teams we lead,” says Shannon Davis, internal audit and compliance manager at Diamondback Energy.

Yet, even while just about every internal auditor knows that strong relationships throughout the organization are critical to executing their jobs effectively, many still make lots of relationship blunders.  They assume too cozy a relationship before much of one exists at all; they don’t carve out time to work on them; and they overstep boundaries, take sides, and engage in office politics. Like any human interaction, office relationships aren’t easy, take work, and are fraught with difficulties.

Before we consider some of the biggest relationship mistakes internal auditors make, however, let’s clarify what it means to have relationships in an internal audit context. It doesn’t mean being best friends with your audit clients and spending weekends on each other’s back decks. It is also not about doing things to facilitate relationship development that could cause you, as an internal auditor, to risk your objectivity. (We’re not going to define what those “no no’s” might be here, but if you find yourself exchanging expensive gifts, you may have crossed this line.)

Having a solid work relationship is more about having a business association designed to allow us to know each other better (even on a personal level) and to have mutual respect. The goal of relationships and relationship management is to help facilitate future interactions from a place of common reference, trust, and, hopefully, some mutual goals. It’s about working together to get on the same page.

So, why do we so often find ourselves not on the same page? Here are six common relationship mistakes that Internal auditors make:

1 Assuming what you want to talk about is more important than what someone else has going on.
We do very important things for our organizations, and our observations and contributions can seem like the most important points to bring up at the time we observe them. But the old saying about needing to “walk a mile in other people’s shoes” is very applicable. What do they have going on right now? Are there more pressing things they have on their plate that we just aren’t aware of? Can they give you their undivided attention?

If you force your agenda onto someone else, you had better have a very strong relationship already, because you could be using up a lot of relationship capital.

As much as is possible, start with questions about what the other person is dealing with and what is going on in their work and their lives. Perhaps now is a great time to talk about what you want to talk about, but perhaps it isn’t. The goal is not just to say what you want and move on. Developing a good relationship is a two-way street and using empathy and listening more than you talk can go a long way to building a very strong one.

2 Bringing up difficult, contentious, or sensitive issues when a strong relationship doesn’t yet exist.
When someone shows up to your workspace and they have something to tell you that you weren’t prepared to hear—or don’t really want to know—how accepting are you of that person and their message, especially if they are interrupting your work and you don’t know them that well?

Well, put the shoe on the other foot. If you have a difficult, contentious, or sensitive issues to bring up to someone, it sure helps if you already know each other well and have a good pre-existing relationship.

Are you investing in relationships outside of the audit projects on which you are currently working? Spending that time now is an investment in the future, so that you can grease the wheels for when that time comes for a more difficult conversation. While you should be investing in relationships all the time, or at least as time permits, proactively across the entire organization, at a minimum consider the following when time is limited: understand the projects coming up on the audit plan, and those you are likely to be involved in, and spend some proactive time on relationships in those areas well before the audit project arrives and you find yourself in the opening conference with no relationships in the area you are now auditing.

3 Talking out of school about things with people to facilitate developing a relationship.
We all want to impress people—be it with what we know or what we think (perhaps, sometimes, it’s even what we think we know). Be careful, though, when sharing sensitive information to enhance relationships, especially if it is talking about others to impress that you are a well-informed insider.

Here’s an example: There is someone important to the success of your work that you have attempted to develop a good relationship with, but they remain at a distance. So, you resort, in a moment of weakness, to speaking out of school about someone else in the organization to them. Yes, it might provide the ice breaker that was needed to get the relationship kick started, but such over-sharing can backfire, too. That person won’t forget that you divulged confidential information about another and will be careful what they say to you, damaging trust and hindering openness.

“Good relationships lead to information sharing, which then leads to productive discussions, and hopefully a little problem-solving and added value, too,” says Mary McVeigh, vice president of quality and internal audit at Heritage Insurance.

4 Not intentionally carving out some time each week to develop and maintain relationships.
We’re all busy, and it is easy for days to turn into weeks and weeks to turn into months before we have reconnected with a specific coworker. Running from meeting to meeting, and project to project, it is easy for this to happen. Before we know it, we realize we have lost touch with the key people in the next area we are auditing.

So, look at your calendar, and be intentional about setting aside time each week to develop and maintain relationships. It may sound contrived, but have a list of people in mind that you would like to get to know better. Ask them to have lunch together or just drop by and say you’d like to know more about what they do at the organization. Remote work makes it harder to have the small interactions in the company breakroom, water cooler, and common spaces, so you might need to reach out and schedule time to communicate with others. And be sure to take part in the planned informal online interactions companies schedule these days, such as Thursday evening cocktails over zoom, or trivia night. Those can go a long way to fostering and developing good work relationships.

5 Not being strategic about relationship building.
When developing relationships, there are certain people we naturally gravitate to. They might have similar interests, see the organization in a similar light, or they are just engaging to talk with. Sometimes these people are related to the work we do and sometimes they are not. That’s not to say don’t develop relationships with those you can’t benefit from (that would be cynical), but do also target the people we know will likely need to interact with in our professional responsibilities. To use a sports analogy, there’s a reason quarterbacks and the wide receivers they throw to like to spend time together in the offseason. They know those relationships are important to success on the field too and building better bonds can increase their effectiveness during the games.

One way to do this is to look at the audit plan for the next few months (or more), and plan to be more strategic in building relationships with those who lead such areas, especially where there might be weak or non-existent relationships.

It’s also important to understand the difference between tactical and strategic relationships. Tactical relationships are those that are important to your department’s day-to-day work. Strategic relationships are those with individuals that can help you get a seat at the table and who are driving the future of the organization. You need to build both tactical and strategic relationships, regardless of your level within the department.

6 Not realizing that relationship building takes a team effort.
For every internal audit function, there are certain key relationships that are needed to help enhance information flow, keep a finger on the pulse of the organization, and help to support the internal audit function’s mission of adding value. Many internal audit teams, however, leave relationship building with these important individuals to whatever grass roots efforts the staff members undertake on their own. As a result, internal audit interacts frequently with some influential individuals, while others are left out of a normal cycle of interaction entirely through unconscious oversight.

Leading internal audit functions take a strategic approach to relationship management and are more thoughtful about how they go about this. Some actively manage a list of important relationships within the department and assign specific internal audit staff (at all levels, including the chief audit executive) to, in essence, “own” certain relationships. A minimum frequency of outreach is determined for each relationship target on each person’s individual list, and a plan of updates within the department is scheduled where each staff member can discuss amongst the audit team who they met with, what they discussed, and what they learned during the conversation. Enhancing collective knowledge about what’s going on in the organization across the team, and being strategic about relationship management, can help boost the overall impression of internal audit and the perception of the value that it adds.

Doesn’t End There
Surely, there is no limit to the mistakes internal auditors make when it comes to relationships and relationship building, and this is hardly an exhaustive list. I’m sure you can think of many others internal auditors can make or even those that you have made yourself. These are among the top from our point of view and taking proactive steps to mitigate these mistakes will serve you well in your quest to add value to your organization and emerge as a trusted advisor.

“We have a tough job … as our role generally creates a strong desire in some to run and hide from us. We must walk the line of maintaining our objectivity and independence and building bridges while we are evaluating what someone does, identifying gaps, figuring out how to constructively, but assertively, tell them what’s broken and get them to let us help them identify a solution,” says Diamondback’s Davis. “And then we have to report it to management and the board without getting shot as the messenger in the process. So, I think relationships are not only important, but are an integral part of a successful internal audit department’s infrastructure and should be consciously woven into what we do daily.”

So, while we know that relationship building is important to the work we do as internal auditors, we may not always realize that we need to be strategic about building them and that they take work. Avoiding the pitfalls described above could be the difference between contentious audits where recommendations get ignored and successful engagements that produce progress and real value. 

Hal Garyn is Managing Director and Owner of Audit Executive Advisory Services, LLC based in FL.

Joseph McCafferty is Editor & Publisher of Internal Audit 360°