Be Succinct

Audit report writing is one of the hardest things to teach new auditors. This can be particularly true when working with team members rotated in from the business (see my posts on Rockstars) or when you've got auditors fresh out of school.

It seems, therefore, worthwhile to spend some blog space talking about some "important safety tips" as they regard report writing. I'll probably do several posts on this in April.

Let's start with being succinct.

Why? After all, those pesky management types have to read our reports, right? We're internal audit, we've got that cool Audit Mandate from our Audit Committee. They'll be hanging on our every word, won't they?

Not in this universe or the next, I'm afraid.

Succinctness (if there is such a word) is the art of getting to the point and it shows intelligence, preparation, and respect. Even if we could force our audit clients to read every word, we need to demonstrate each of these points to build credibility. And, credibility is king.

There are a number of ways to be succinct.

Destroy Clutter. One of my favorite books on the subject, On Writing Well, The Classic Guide to Writing Non-fiction, by William Zinsser, puts it this way:

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds, the writer is always behind. New varieties sprout overnight, and by noon they are part of American speech. Consider all the prepositions that are draped onto verbs that don't need any help. We no longer head committees. We head them up. Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out that shouldn't be there.

Organize your thoughts. It costs alot of money to have senior people organize your thoughts for you. I've yet to meet an internal auditor whose time was more valuable than the people they were auditing.

I know, it hurts. Deal with it.

That means the company is, in fact, paying you to make things quick and easy for your audit client. If it means outlining, rewriting, reoutlining, and re-rewriting an audit finding to cause the reader to understand your point quickly - you should do so.

I find the Five Part Approach to audit findings (from IIA Practice Advisory on Standard 2410-1 - you know, condition, cause, criteria, effect/risk, and recommendation) a literal model for organization of a finding. Allow no more than one (maybe two) sentences for each. If you can be that structured, it helps the reader to look at multiple findings and know that the risk statement for the next finding will probably follow the criteria statement. If you can be that brief, your finding will probably get read.

Directness. Audit reports are clear and decisive statements. I can't even recall the number of audit findings I've reviewed that talk around the issue. Sometimes this happens because the auditor knows the subject so well that they don't remember to state it outright to the audit client. Other times, the issue feels scary and so the natural tendency is to "break the news" to the client. Both are a waste of precious attention span and, worse, can lead to misunderstandings.

Voice and Tone. Alot of report writers forget they need to pay any attention to voice and tone. For the uninitiated, these are the way the reader hears your words in their head. This blog has a particularly voice and tone that is different than the one I would use in an audit report. It is significantly more energetic and informal.

Now, I went to a pretty uncompromising liberal arts college for my undergraduate degree. Austin College is the sort of place where every course (including accounting) includes a major paper or thesis. Yet, they spent little or no time discussing voice and tone. So, chances are your auditors are largely unfamiliar with this concept. If you introduce it to them, it can be an eye-opener. It can take their writing from sounding like Ben Stein to sounding, more appropriately, like Peter Jennings.

One is laborious to listen to, while the other can be a delight - even when he was delivering bad news.

More thoughts on report writing in coming posts.


-- Prescott Coleman, CIA, CISA