Auditor's communication skills

Auditors need to have a lot of knowledge, such as accounting, financial management, tax law and other financial and taxation professional knowledge, the industry background knowledge of the audited enterprise, and various environmental factors that may have an impact on the audited enterprise, but it is often easy to overlook a very important soft skill, that is, communication. Communication is not only a science, but also an art. Establishing good and smooth communication between auditors and customers is helpful to complete the audit work efficiently and with high quality, and even has unexpected effects on discovering fraud.

What communication skills should auditors have in audit business?

1. Communication should be based on full preparation and understanding of business.

Audit work is a special work, which can only be carried out after obtaining audit data. Therefore, in the audit business, it is inevitable to communicate with customers through various inquiry methods. If you lack professional knowledge and are not proficient in business, it will be difficult to grasp the focus of the problem and the key to communication, and you will not be convinced by customers, and even affect customers' work and cause resentment. Therefore, auditors should first make full business preparations and have a detailed understanding of the audited entity and its industry on the basis of previous data.

2. Create a relaxed conversation atmosphere

If the interviewee is highly nervous, it will often lead to two results: saying nothing or not knowing what to say. Therefore, auditors should create a relaxed conversation atmosphere during the interview, such as choosing a quiet and undisturbed environment, starting with a relaxed topic and slowly introducing the topic.

3. Try to choose open questions instead of closed questions.

Open-ended questions are questions that can be answered freely, and there is no need to set options for the respondents, such as "What do you think?" "What do you think?" "Why?" Closed questions are relative to open questions, which usually take "yes" or "no" as the answer. Open-ended questions can make auditors know more information and make better professional judgments in audit business.

4. Ask clear questions and be good at listening.

The knowledge background, industry background and position of auditors and interviewed customers are completely different. Auditors should use common language and choose ways to avoid ambiguity. When the interviewee speaks, he should pay attention to listening patiently, keep a serious attitude, pay attention and show a strong desire to communicate. However, if the interviewee deviates from the topic and the content of the answer has nothing to do with the audit business, auditors should also pay attention to skillfully pulling the topic back to the topic.

5. Understand the problem of fraud from the side.

Based on the existing audit technology, it is difficult for auditors to find the fraud problem of audited customers. However, the staff of the audited unit will be more or less aware of the abnormal phenomenon, so auditors can understand the abnormal phenomenon through interviews with customers, which will help auditors find fraud problems that can not be found by conventional auditing techniques.