Building Relationship with Client
In some cases, auditee or client will not be cooperative with auditors. To overcome this situation, auditor must break down the barriers that keep them, while at the same time not damaging the rapport with primary audit contact [1].Building relationships can be accomplished in several ways[1]:
· Try to meet with primary audit contacts prior to commencing the audit e.g. meet them for lunch. During this meeting, auditors can identify some common ground that can be used throughout the engagement to shore up the relationship and build rapport. Also, when meeting in this manner, auditor should also take notice of the auditees’ mannerisms and reactions which can be used while performing the audit (this is referred to as "norming" or “calibration”). Later in the audit when auditor poses a tough question to the auditee, auditor should consider if their mannerisms change or become suspect when compared to those observed while building rapport.
· Auditor should not be overly confident or arrogant. Clients are those who are performing the everyday task and probably know more about their operation than auditor. As an auditor, auditor adds value by making suggestions on how things can be donebetter, but this should be done with tact. It is often best to work through these things collaboratively with the auditee in a didactic way.
· Auditor should not be an alarmist. When identifying an issue, auditor should keep its criticality in context. Clients do not appreciate drama and can hurt auditor’s credibility and rapport with critical contacts.
Conclusion
Traditionally, IS auditing practice mainly requires knowledge and technical skills of IS governance, risk, and control. IS auditing involves more than hard skills in achieving an effective auditing. One of the core competencies every auditor should posses in addition to hard skills are soft skills, especially communication skill. Practitioners who understand and able to balance between the hard skills and soft skills will most likely have a more successful career in IS auditing.
[1] http://www.theiia.org/chapters/pubdocs/88/InternalAuditSoftSkills.pdf