Filed under Audit Management and Team Collaboration

I was going back through some notes from a conference I went to a over a year ago when I came across my notes about the five dysfunctions of a team. I have never read the book itself by Patrick Lencioni but judging by the reviews on Amazon, I am sure it is outstanding. Anyway, as I reflected on these, I think they are dead on when it comes to the dysfunctions of audit teams. I will elaborate.

1. Absence of Trust

Audit teams very often lack trust. It is a function of the employee rating systems established in the industry, particularly by the "Big Four". The absence of trust between team members leads to an unwillingness to be open and to be vulnerable to criticism. When employees are rated by being compared to each other, internal competition arises and internal competition leads to an unspoken desire for others to fail. When there is known desire for failure, the existence of trust between peers is impossible.

2. Fear of Conflict

This is a big one. Most fear conflict and typically dislike that person on the team who is aggressive and often the source of conflict. Politeness, guarded comments, and language that avoids all appearance of disagreement prevents unfiltered debate. This is a tragedy, particularly as it relates to audits. Open, unfiltered debate is incredibly important to the audit process. Frankly, in most audits, some conflict and tension likely should exist, both amongst the audit team as well between the audit team and the auditee.

3. Lack of Commitment

Everybody knows who the "over-achievers" are in the office. They are hard to work with. The reason is because they expect others they work to carry the same level of passion and commitment that they do. For a lot of us though, there just unfortunately is a lack of passion for the audit business. However, if you're going to bother, be committed. If you can't, no problem. But couldn't the time you spend in your career be better spent elsewhere?

4. Lack of Accountability

This one goes along with fear of conflict. Audits are projects and projects have both responsibility assignments and deadlines. When somebody tries to slide on their commitments, call them out. I know there have been A LOT of audits that would have been completed much more effectively if someone had stepped up and put me in my place regarding my responsibilities. Audit teams need mechanism for maintaining accountability, but ones that increase trust, no paralyze it.

5. Inattention to Results

Finally, my pet peeve. Results matter, quality matters, and DETAILS MATTER. When a team I supervise delivers a result but does so with poor attention to detail (unorganized workpapers, poorly formatted spreadsheets and documents, illogical work programs, etc.) it drives me crazy. This leads to an absence of my trust in the teams ability to conduct thorough, effective audits.

Explicitly avoiding the dysfunctions when developing a team feels to me like a great recipe to manage the "human" side of audit projects. So much so in fact that I have just talked myself into adding the full book to my Audible queue.