Bob Clifford is a Health, Safety, Security, and Environment (HSSE) assessor for LRQA and a long-term Exemplar Global-certified ISO 14001 lead auditor.
In this conversation, we chatted about the changes in auditing over the past few decades, the role of internal auditing and second-party auditing, and why personnel certification is an important consideration for conformity-assessment professionals working anywhere in industry.
EXEMPLAR GLOBAL: You have been an Exemplar Global-certified management systems auditor for 25 years. How do you see auditing having progressed during that time?
BOB CLIFFORD: Early on, I saw auditors as we all knew them, a unique and interesting profession and a “necessary evil” for organizations adopting and seeking registration to then-emerging ISO management system standards. This perception was tinged with the myth, lore, and prejudice traditionally associated with the expected traits of the profession, specifically of being picky and adversarial in nature, like the caricature of the stodgy old bank examiner from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
The financial scandals of the early 2000s, and the resulting emergence of ESG (specifically the importance of governance, along with environment and social) is resulting in a more welcoming corporate attitude toward auditing. This has afforded auditors the opportunity to be seen more as a “good cop” rather than a bad one, and the auditing function to be seen as more as benefit than a cost.
The game-changer today has been the link drawn between ESG and the broader concept of sustainability which is becoming an increasingly desired focus of evolved business enterprises. The recent recognition of the one-to-one connection between the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and management system standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001, etc., has also highlighted the importance and value of a robust internal auditing function.
EG: How do you see the future of auditing from a customer perspective?
BC: What I think is needed, to underscore this value of a robust auditing function within sustainability-minded organizations, is a means of better credentialing the roles of internal auditors within the organization, recognizing that they’re not an isolated, smallish team but an important part of a larger corps. These professionals aren’t homogenous but can be (and in fact, must be) a hierarchy of specialties. They are not merely picking through documents to find inconsistencies but are, in fact, contributing to the goal of organizational sustainability.
This is where I would go back to the common text of the ISO management system standards and see, hiding in plain sight in clause 9.2.1 not one, nor two, but three critical roles for this internal auditor corps to affect governance within an organization. They do this by ensuring: (1) compliance of the organization to its own processes and procedures; (2) conformance to any adopted standards for its system of management or even the standard of care it affords its workers and its broader stakeholders; and (3) effectiveness in both the means by which governance is implemented and the degree to which it improves performance, as measured in the achievement of defined leading and lagging indicators. I believe that these distinct roles within the auditor corps, both for the auditors and their titular head, who is often known as the lead auditor or audit program leader, warrant recognition.
These roles are usually qualified, informally, within an organization. Formally and independently certifying these professionals adds tremendously to the status and acceptance of this critically important governance function, one that is going to be requisite for the future of evolved organizations. This future could well be hinged on personnel certification bodies, such as Exemplar Global, and your own role in highlighting, promoting, offering, and continually improving upon these credentials.
EG: Finally, as someone who has benefited from the opportunities that arise from Exemplar Global personnel certification, what do you see as the career-development advantages of certification for those in conformity assessment?
BC: I think that, like other professions such as legal or medical, certification essentially affords professional auditors a license to operate, one that denotes a thorough and independent measure of competence that can be recognized and accepted by those employing them. I should mention that I interpret the term “professional auditor” as meaning an individual whose compensation is provided wholly or in part for performing audits. This would certainly be third-party auditors working for conformity assessment (i.e., certification bodies) and second-party (i.e., supplier) auditors working for private business enterprises. But with formal, recognized certification of first-party (i.e., internal) auditors by Exemplar Global, what might have been seen previously as a volunteer or “voluntold” role in an organization will now be seen more as a compensated, professional role that, along with the day-to-day duties of that employee, bring benefits and value to their employer. And being credentialed for that role, which is a portable benefit, should certainly provide career advancement opportunities to employees within or beyond their current employer.