Smoke the Peace Pipe with Your Client

April 2004

I have had an earful of complaints this past month from two of my best buddies. One is undergoing an audit and one is conducting an audit. Both are frustrated and angry.

My friend who is undergoing an audit feels more like she is undergoing a siege. The auditor refuses to tell her what his objective is and has been snooping around for three months longer than initially planned. His scope just keeps stretching and stretching. And on top of that, the auditor is uncommunicative and secretive.

My other friend is an internal auditor who is being criticized at every turn by a fearful manager. This manager is insecure in her job and resents the fact that her area is under examination. She blocks my girlfriend from doing her work whenever possible and complains about her during important management meetings.

These sorts of stories make me happy to be on the outside looking in. I vividly remember audit clients who bristled when I walked in a room and I remember being audited when I was a federal grants controller—not once, but three times! It is very instructive being on both sides of the fence.

One thing I learned is that auditors are pains in the rear. Plain and simple. No matter how pleasant we are or how helpful we promise to be, the bottom line is that we are judging our clients. and that makes for some squirrelly behavior. No one likes being judged.

Personally, I like to live in a fantasy land where I believe that everything I do is with good intention and that I am doing the best that I can. When someone points out otherwise, I am saddened and deflated. I may even, in a less than mature moment, lash out at this smarty-pants someone! The potential for conflict when you are a smarty-pants auditor is high.

Now the more innovative approach to auditing, where you assist the client in determining their own strengths and "areas for improvement" helps take some of the sting out of the situation, but not all of it. At the end of the day, we are still sitting there as an expert, as an authority figure, as a judge of what the client has been doing.

So what can we do about this inherent unpleasantness in our chosen profession? Plenty.

First of all, we need to be conscious of the feelings of the client.

I know nothing about Native Americans other than what I have seen in movies and from my numerous visits to southwestern states. But when one tribe visits another on TV they always have a little pow-wow and hang out smoking the peace pipe before they get down to business. The visiting tribe doesn't just walk in and start eating the other tribe's food uninvited. There is a little warm-up ceremony.

This is, in my mind, akin to an entrance conference. Here your tribe—the audit tribe—is visiting the client tribe and asking permission to set up camp and partake of their records and management knowledge.

The entrance conference is a critical moment where you set the tone for the entire visit. I don't think I realized the gravity of this moment when I first began auditing. I thought it was just another stupid procedure that I had to get through to get me closer to the end of the project. This initial meeting is critical to the success of your relationship with the other tribe.

Here are some things you want to make sure you take care of in this initial pow-wow:

• Show respect for the chief of the client tribe. Let the chief show you all his feathers and brag on his accomplishments for a while. Ask leading questions to draw out the personality and the pride of the chief and then complement their obviously excellent leadership.
• Find out who else is critical to the functioning of the tribe and ask permission to meet with them.
• Educate the chief about the hierarchy of your tribe. Tell them who will be accountable for results and who they can talk to if there are any issues.
• Educate the chief about your tribe's special ways. Tell them how they can expect you to act and when they can expect to see the results of your work.
• Tell the chief how long you will be visiting so they can set aside enough food and tents for you. in other words, find out what closet you are going to be working out of!
• Tell the chief why you are there and what you hope to accomplish with your visit.
• Look like you know what you are doing. Don't choke on the peace pipe or seem disorganized or unfocused. Have an agenda and make sure you cover everything. If you are new to auditing, meeting with the client can be intimidating, but do whatever you need to do to become more comfortable as a leader in a meeting; practice, write a script, bring your teddy bear in your briefcase.
• Make friendly eye contact. This has to be one of the best ways of building rapport with any human being. Lack of eye contact makes people think you are shifty and untrustworthy.
• Make several simple promises and then keep them. Making a promise and keeping it is the best way to build trust. Promise the chief that you will tell him of your progress every few days and keep to that promise.
• Promise the chief that they will be the first to know of any issues that arise. No chief likes to be surprised by gossip. It undermines their authority and leadership.

Now sometimes the chief is not honest or forthright. Sometimes the chief is fearful and not confident in their position. Sometimes the chief is just a manipulative so-and-so. Sometimes the chief has a wide array of psychosis that could benefit from counseling. Here, you are left with only one choice. You have to be the bigger person.

Just because the other chief is incapable of being a mature adult in their relationship with you does not mean you become like them. That is the mark of a professional. A professional maintains composure at all times. If you act squirrelly too, you ultimately have no defense, because you should have known better.

And a happy thought to keep in mind is that you get to come and go in and out of that crazy tribe. The chief and his people are stuck there—every day.