Don't be an arrogant auditor

Now this, today, is episode 15 and you've seen the title. Don't be an arrogant auditor. And I'm your host award winning. Robert Berry, but again, you've seen the title for today. Don't be an arrogant auditor. So what do I mean by that? The arrogant auditor, look, you've seen them, you know, the ones you go into audit engagements and they know everything about the client and they tell you how terrible the client is.

You see, they've been auditing this client for many, many years and they know where all the skeletons are. Let me know if you've ever encountered an auditor like that. They know everything that's happening in the department and everything is terrible. Furthermore, if the client would only listen to them, everything would be okay. You see, this is the attitude that your arrogant auditor would take.

They know everything about the client and the client would be better off if they simply listened to them. So before we go any further, let's just define what arrogant is. Let's define what arrogant is. Let's just take a dictionary definition. Let's talk about arrogance for a minute. The definition from Oxford languages in the dictionary is having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or ability. Again, you've seen them. They talk at the clients, not to the clients.

Again, they talk at the client, not to the clients. And my man Thomas is here and Thomas says, thankfully, I know I'm not an arrogant auditor. I really. I really do already know everything about, oh, that was funny. Um, I wasn't expecting that this early in the morning, Thomas man. All right. So now that we've had our comic relief from my man Thomas. Let's go back to the arrogant auditor again.

Now mind you, there's a difference between giving your audit staff a heads up on your client's culture versus downright arrogance. So let's define the difference between the two, a heads up might sound something like this. "Look, guys, this client has had problems in the past. Go check out the work papers and the report and you'll see what they've had problems with."

You see someone who's just giving you a heads up will tell you factually why they're saying the things that they're saying, whereas that arrogant auditor, well, here's what they might do. They might start using ad hominem arguments with your clients. And you guys have heard me talk about ad hominem arguments and you know, just how much I love at ad hominem arguments, but that's what an arrogant auditor will do. They'll start to say things like, oh, this client is terrible.

Oh, this client is crazy, but they won't add any substance behind anything that they say. Now. Here's what I will say. You have to watch for anyone who uses ad hominem arguments, especially in auditor though, because what happens is they don't support what they're saying with any type of facts and good morning Eylea. Good to see you here. So. You don't want to be an arrogant auditor, if you are. Here's what happens. Arrogant auditors, miss out on significant opportunities in their career.

There are three negative consequences to being a negative auditor. And guess what? I'm about to talk about them. So let's just get right into what are the three negative consequences of being an arrogant auditor? Well, first arrogant auditors, miss opportunities to learn something new. Every audit is a learning experience. Let me say that again. Every audit is a learning experience. Your whole job is to go in, ask a lot of really good questions, assess an environment and give a conclusion.

That means you have to learn something about the environment that you are evaluating. Could you imagine going into the doctor, and as soon as you walk into his or her office, they automatically tell you what's wrong with you without asking you any questions or doing an evaluation. That's the equivalent of an arrogant auditor who does ask any questions. If you're an arrogant auditor, you will miss out on opportunities to learn something new because every audit is a learning experience.

The second thing, the second bad consequence of being an arrogant auditor, well, after not learning something new, you miss opportunities to connect with your clients. Let me say that again. If you're an arrogant auditor, you miss opportunities to connect with your cilents. So think about this. Connecting with clients allows you to collaborate and to contribute to building a better organization. And that connection often starts with listening and learning. Arrogant people don't listen well..

Arrogant people don't learn and grow. Arrogant people don't move from point A to point B arrogant people don't learn how to do new and different things. Arrogant people are also usually passive aggressive communicators. And you guys know, you know, how I feel about passive aggressive communicators. So let me just go back to my audience for a minute because we have a few people. Marvin says, hello. Hey Marvin, how's it going? I hope all is well with you.

And Leslie Hamburg is here as Lee what's going on. Leslie says, wonder what type of relationship arrogant auditors have with their clients? Well, Leslie stay tuned because we're about to cover some of that because as I just said, you're saying. Thing that you miss out on. If you're an arrogant an auditor is you miss out on opportunities to connect with your clients. So that relationship has got to be pretty bad if you're not connecting with your clients.

But the third thing that you miss out on, if you're an arrogant auditor. But let's go back to number one and two first, first arrogant auditors, miss opportunities to learn something new. Every audit is a learning experience. So you will miss out on that opportunity. But the second thing is well, arrogant, auditors, miss opportunities to truly connect with clients. But the third thing is if you're an arrogant auditor, you miss out on opportunities to serve your clients.

See if you're an arrogant audit and your clients won't trust you, and then you won't be able to perform your job. So how do you identify an arrogant auditor. That's the question for today. How do you identify an arrogant auditor? I'm going to give you three ways that you can identify an arrogant auditor.

But before we do that, if you would like this breakdown on arrogant auditors and the other types of auditors that I've identified these personalities are well-defined in my book, ask better questions, get better answers, perform better audits. You see in this book, I break down different personalities for auditors, as well as different personalities for audit clients and how to deal with each of those different personalities. So see this book.

This book hit the top 50 in the U S and it hit number one in France. Why France? I don't know. Don't ask me. Is it written in French? No, it's in English. I also have a great one or two day seminar surrounding the principles that are in this book. If I remember to I'll go back and drop a link to the book.

In the chat, but if you want to get a jumpstart after this live show is over, go to ask, get performed.com again, that is asked, get perform.com and Leslie, thank you very much for your kind words. Leslie says it is a great book. See, I didn't have to see it. Somebody else said it for me. Thank you, Leslie, because I mean, you may not have trusted me if I had just said. So now back to our regularly scheduled program, listen, some of you guys may not think that you appear arrogant.

Let me say that again. Some of you may not think that you appear arrogant and some of you may not be arrogant, but there's this thing called being accidentally. Now, some of you are scratching your head right now. No, it's either on purpose or not. You can be accidentally arrogant.

And so let's talk about that for just one moment and what that means and what that looks like, because I know it may sound strange and you may think that there is no such thing as accidentally arrogant, but let me give you an example and I'm going to give you a personal example of what that looks like. So at one point, In my life, I changed careers. So I moved from financial services to higher education. Now I entered the higher education industry as an audit director. Let me say that again.

I entered the higher education industry as an audit director. And I knew nothing about the higher education industry, but I did know about auditing. So I did what any good auditors should do. I studied the higher education industry. I went to training. I actually got certified in some kind of higher education industry, something, something or another. So I had a lot of catch-up to do, and I was working hard to do that catch.

But then one of my first engagements in the higher education industry was surrounding our banking relationships and our credit cards that we had, um, at the university. Oh boy, I felt happy. I was like, woo we're talking banking. We're speaking my language. And so my clients invited me to meetings while they were talking about, we were moving to another credit card processing platform.

Okay. They invited me to meetings and because I understood the financial services industry, I had a lot to offer or so I felt now in these meetings, I was talking a lot because I knew what I was talking about. Okay. You see what had happened was the kind of credit card processing that they were doing was something that was fairly new. So there were certain things that I did know and certain things that I didn't know.

And while I did add some value at some points in time, I should've just shut up. My goal was not to be mean or malicious. My goal was to help. But while I thought I was helping at some points, I did appear just a tad bit arrogant and it hit me one day when I was sitting in a meeting and we were having these discussions and someone said something. And I thought about it. I was like, wait a minute, I'm talking entirely too much because I haven't heard enough from my clients.

And this was many, many years ago, but this is what started me to thinking, you know, sometimes we can accidentally do things that make us look unfavorable. So now again, you have people who can sometimes be just outright arrogant, but sometimes, sometimes you can. Accidentally arrogant, which is going to make you miss out on opportunities with your audit clients. You're going to miss out on an opportunity to connect with them. You're going to miss out on the opportunity to learn something new.

You're going to miss out on opportunities to help improve your organization. I mean, you think about this. My clients invited me there as a casual observer, as a trusted advisor. I wasn't there to control their process. I was there to ensure that proper controls were in place and because I was talking a little bit too much. I may have done some things to tarnish that relationship. Fortunately, I was able to salvage it before it got too bad.

So the question that I asked is how can you identify an arrogant auditor? That's the question? How can you identify an arrogant auditor now, before we go there, let's go back to the comments, Thomas. Thank you. My friend dropped the link to my book. In the chat. So if you guys want to go, I think I may actually have, um, the first two chapters up so that you can read. I can't remember. I think I do, but I'm not real sure. Now my man Clearance is here and Clarence says he agrees with Leslie.

It's a great book. Thank you very much Clearance. And Leslie, you guys are really making my day. And Marvin says, thanks Thomas for sharing. Clarence is talking about my other book, creating wonderful work papers. He said, it's also a good, thank you. My man. You Clarence. You're selling me today, man. Am. I might have to send you a commission check. Yeah. So that's the first book written entirely about work papers. That's all now is still here. Thank you, my friend.

She says you can apply this information to any field. We closed doors being arrogant. You are absolutely correct. You guys don't know Eylea. She's a mindset coach amongst some of the other things that she does. A lot of the principles that I talk about with auditors are really about your mindset, because anybody can teach you the technical skills, but really mindset, soft skills. Those are the hardest skills, but those are the skills that will get you the furthest in your career.

And those are also the skills that will make you the most money in your audit career. And mark is here in mark says, Hey, Robert, how do you deal with an arrogant client mark? Here's what I'll say to them. You got to get. I talk about arrogant clients in the book, I named four or five different client personality types, how to recognize them and how to deal with them. But today we're talking about us because we'll in order to fix the outside, you have to fix the inside first.

So I want us auditors to deal with the things that are ailing us first. And then we can go outside. I may do an episode on one type of a audit client in one of these audit bites, PI. But very good question. You want to know the answer? It's in the book. I'm sorry. I just went back up to clearance again. So the question that we were at is how can you identify an arrogant auditor? Well, here's your first name? You might be arrogant auditors. If you talk more than your client.

Now I know some people get nervous and they talk about. Sometimes when I'm nervous, I talk, but those auditors who talk incessantly and is usually negative. And it's usually about the clients, they're probably arrogant, but to add a little bit more sauce to this, the definition of auditor itself is. Well, one definition of auditor don't believe me. Let's go back to our Oxford languages definition. Look at that second definition, a listener, an auditor is a listener.

So the question that I would ask is to my auditing professionals, listening today, are you a good list? Are you a good listener? So you might be an arrogant auditor. If you talk more than your clients do, because again, how can you assess an environment? If you've not heard what that environment entails, you have to listen first, then assess, then draw conclusions, then report back.

But the second thing that might indicate that you're an arrogant auditor is, well, if you don't ask any questions, You hear me say this all the time. Curiosity is the cornerstone of internal auditing. Now, to be curious, you have to ask a lot of questions. Now, mind you, there is a difference between asking questions and questioning people. I say that all the time as well.

For example, if you're asking questions, you might say to a client, "How did this happened?" After you find something that's bad, right? Or you might say, "Can you help understand the process that led this?" Whatever this is that you're talking about, that's asking questions now, questioning people you might say to a client, how in the world could you let this happen? Notice the difference one is inquisitive. The other is inquisitive. Did I say that, right?

I think I just lost my whole train of thought there. One, one is accusatory and one is inquisitive. That is what I meant to say. If I didn't say that a few minutes ago. So there's a difference. One is inquisitive. One is accusatory. So again, you might be an arrogant auditor. If one, you talk more than your clients to. Second. If you don't ask any questions, now you ready for the third one? Let me just hold this suspenseful moment for change for just one moment.

The third way to identify if you might be an arrogant auditor is if you do not communicate to understand. If you do not communicate to understand, think about it. If you're simply barking out orders, without understanding the underlying environment, something is really wrong because as I just told you, auditor means listener. Auditor means listener. So you might be in area. Audrey.

If you talk more than your clients, if you don't ask any questions and if you don't communicate with the, to understand what's happening around you. In other words, if you don't seek context now, what can you do if you are, or if you know an arrogant Otter again, what can you do if you are, or if you. In arrogant, auditor, anybody have any ideas, anybody want to drop into the chat? What do you think you can do if you are, or if you know, an arrogant auditor?

So what I'll do is I'll see if anybody's going to drop any answers into the chat. And while you're doing that, Here's what I'll say, Christmas just passed and you all have a favorite auditor on your list. Go to my website, go get you some audit merge. I've got an awesome auditor. T-shirt and I don't mean that. It's an awesome t-shirt for auditors. I mean, it literally says awesome audit or own it. Why? Because you guys are awesome. I have, I love audit shirts.

I have coffee mugs, all kinds of stuff. Go ahead, check out the website, go get your merge. Um, so now the question that I just asked is what can you do if you are, or if you know, an arrogant ardor. So now. I was waiting for Thomas to drop something into the chain. And because Thomas didn't drop anything into the chat, here's what I would tell you again, the answer to that question is in the book, uh, ask better questions, get better answers, perform better audits.

But again, this is audit bites. Our subject for today is don't be an arrogant auditor. If you're an arrogant auditor, you miss out on opportunities to connect with audit clients, you miss out on opportunities to have learning experiences. Now you might be arrogant if you talk more than your clients, or if you don't ask questions or if you don't communicate with the intent to understand. Laser is here and Liza says, provide nonverbal cues and give them the opportunity to change their behavior.

That is one thing that you can do. Uh, I, I will admit though, if you have someone that works with you, Behaving in a way that's eroding your, uh, relationship with your clients. You have to address it with them. You have to address it with them. So again, guys, this is audit bikes. This is episode number 15. Don't be an arrogant auditor. If you would like CPEs for this episode, give me about a day. Go to my website. You'll be able to get CPEs. Watching a podcast or watching a live show.

I think that's kind of cool. Don't you think that's kind of cool. I think that's cool. So go to my website thatauditguy.com. Find the episode, get your CPEs. So I am Robert Berry. I want to thank you guys for joining. Oh advice. And Thomas is he wasn't trying to come across as arrogant acting like he knew everything, so, oh, all right. Until next. Thank you for joining us on this episode of audit bites. If you want to do more, see more, be more check out our website that I got.com.

Quality training, audit merch. Yes, we have hats shirts and other apparel as well as past copies of this podcast and the Friday fraudster podcast. www.thatauditguy.Com. Thanks for joining us.