By Michael Bournazian, Eng., Newsletter Editor, ASQ Senior Member, Quality Management Professional, CSSGB with Rolls-Royce
A rare thing happened during the last week of February 2025.
I was virtually conducting a supplier audit, with yours truly as the Lead Auditor while a colleague of mine was onsite at the supplier in the UK. The audit lasted approximately 2.5 days and covered all the elements of ISO9001, as well as specific requirements put forth by my company to its supply chain.
And in the end, we raised NO findings.
Anyone who conducts audits in the Quality field will know that an audit devoid of any findings/non-conformances is the rarest of species, the proverbial diamond in the rough . . . a very, very, very big rough. But there it was, staring my colleague and I in the face at the end of 2.5 days, and we were both really happy about it.
Truth be told, we did raise 2 observations, which in our company’s audit processes means “you are verging on finding territory, barely a stone’s throw away”, but not a finding. There was also 1 recommendation; in other words “maybe doing this would makes things better, but you can take it or leave”. But no findings.
During the first 10 years of my Quality career, I spent more time being audited than auditing. As a result, I encountered many different types of auditors and auditing styles. My least favourite of these styles was one which I dubbed FTF (Find The Findings); in other words, the auditor is looking for anything and everything that is wrong in order to raise as many findings as possible. In some cases, I was convinced that they must have been “paid by the finding”. I grinned and tolerated it.
When I started a new Quality role in 2007 with Rolls-Royce Canada which would require me to regularly visit and audit suppliers, I believe I subconsciously decided that I would make every effort to not take on the bad habits of the auditors I experienced in the previous 10 years. And this included not succumbing to the FTF style. I started making it a point during opening meetings (and I still do) to say that the goal of the audit is to look and verify for conformance, not non-conformance. In other words, I won’t be specifically going out of my way to look for only mistakes; if one is found, then yes, that has to be documented and the auditee has to respond and correct, but it won’t be the goal of the audit. The goal of any audit should be to verify if the company/system/process/etc. is meeting the intended requirements, and it is up to the auditee to show that that is being done.
So for the audit conducted at the end of February 2025, our goal was to look and verify for conformance, and there was plenty of it. During the closing meeting, the Quality Manager stated that he “thoroughly enjoyed the audit, and appreciated that we worked with them and not against them”. Yes, working together so that both supplier and customer create a positive relationship is key, and being an auditor who only wants to “find the findings” is not how to meet that objective.
Besides, how many times have you heard the words “audit” and “enjoyed” used in the same sentence by an auditee?
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Thank you, all the best and none of the worst.
