Over the years, we’ve worked with many different auditors in L&I and ESD audits, and it’s gotten to where we can fairly accurately predict the type of audit a client is going to have based on the type of the auditor that is conducting the audit. Indeed, it often strikes me how different an audit experience and result can be based purely on the auditor who is assigned to a case.
Here’s my breakdown/assessment of the types of auditors I’ve come across, and how their experiences and even personalities can lead to different experiences and results in an audit.
The New Auditor. New auditors tend to follow a script. They’re given detailed instructions about how to conduct an audit, the questions to ask, the documents to request, and timeline within which to complete the audit. And these tend to comprise their marching orders. So with a new auditor, you can expect to go through the full audit process, often with little or no shortcuts. I like working with new auditors because if you know their script, you’ll know what to expect. Also new auditors know that they don’t know the law as well, and can be open to correction; and so they’re less likely to make mistakes that go uncorrected. A drawback with new auditors is that they can go too much by the book, while failing to exercise discretion when discretion is warranted. All in all, new auditors tend to be thorough and conscientious auditors.
The Experienced Auditor. Experienced auditors can be a mixed bag. Some experienced auditors can be jaded from past audits, and will use past experiences to generate profiles about businesses, and will then conduct their audits accordingly. While the approach can help to ensure that bad actors get “punished,” a drawback of it is that these types of auditors tend to assume that most businesses are trying to trick the system. With these auditors, once they’ve made up their mind, they can’t be swayed, and there’s not much you can do except to anticipate that any corrections made will need to be made in the agency reconsideration/appeal process. On the other hand, and this is more common, there are experienced auditors who, because of their extensive experience, will conduct audits with more empathy and more exercise of discretion. These auditors tend to understand the reality of operating a business, they tend to see patterns of businesses making the same mistakes, and they tend to see that businesses are often learning the law during the audit when it’s obviously too late. As a result you can expect these types of auditors to exercise more empathy and discretion.
The Mistake Prone Auditor. There are certain auditors that, unfortunately, you can reliably expect to produce audits that are riddled with mistakes. Often these auditors tend to not be thorough, and to instead use assumptions about businesses to support their audit results. Fortunately, there aren’t many of these auditors, and in addition, agencies like L&I have an excellent reconsideration process for getting these audits corrected.
The Thorough Auditor. Thorough auditors tend to follow the script. In the audit meeting, they will ask detailed questions covering a range of a business’s operations. They will often be so thorough that they will delve into matters they’re entitled to ask about, but that really have no bearing on what they need to know for the audit. When they are reviewing audit records, you can expect them to have numerous questions about matters that only a thorough review of records would pick up on. While thorough auditors make cases more involved than they need to be, it’s hard to find fault with them as they’re clearly taking pride in their work and striving to do the best job they can.
The Reasonable Auditor. My favorite auditors are reasonable auditors…surprise, surprise. These are often experienced and skilled auditors who rely on their experiences to conduct fair audits. On the one hand, they’re not pushovers and will use their experience to identify bad actors and to deal with them accordingly. On the other hand, they understand that businesses aren’t perfect and will make mistakes, often innocent mistakes. So they’ll tend to use discretion and empathy in dealing with those businesses. Unlike Mistake Prone auditors discussed above, reasonable auditors will often try to ensure that they have reasonable bases for findings, rather than grounding their findings on assumptions and speculations.
In my experiences, I’ve found auditors to generally do a good job. Indeed, from time to time, I’ll find myself defending auditors to my clients – who might assume the auditor has an improper agenda/motive – because often the auditor is just doing what the job calls for. Often there’s no agenda/bad motive; it’s just somebody showing up to work to do their job. And because the job is difficult and thankless, we’ve found the best way to engage with an auditor is to respect and cooperate with them during the process, first because it’s the right to do, and second because you’ll likely get better results.