I have been in internal auditing for nearly twenty five years and every year I have been asked if I had any way to help management lower cost and improve product quality, but until now, I never really had an approach or product that I felt truly delivered. I’m here to tell you I believe I have a process that is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s a process that recognizes that not every manager or staff person is cut out to capture the attention and imagination of a group of peers and superiors by acknowledging that people in a given setting develop behavioral patterns that typically disqualify almost anyone in the group from rethinking an activity’s process or objective. Furthermore, this approach realizes that it’s counterintuitive to expect an employee to believe that they can just speak out about management’s and colleagues’ shortcomings without fear of offending anyone or jeopardizing the harmony of the operation.

So you ask me, what can an auditor do to help management get a fresh perspective on the efficiencies and effectiveness of their operations? How can you as an auditor help management overcome the built in bias and limitations of their staff and stimulate out-of-the-box thinking so needed to refresh and rejuvenate business operations? Well I have an answer that may catch you by surprise-- Control Self Assessment. But not just any old version of CSA approach, but a CSA approach called the Facilitated CSA Workshop Approach that has years of process improvement built into it based upon the input of participants from thousands of actual workshops. I speak from first hand experience and can say without qualification that as in everything, a quality product just works better, be it a car, kite or CSA approach.

This is an approach that capitalizes on Internal Audits’ reputation as objective and unbiased. It uses the Internal Auditors as trained Facilitators to lead the workshops through explicit steps and processes while also using software designed to capture autonomous votes, detailed comments and action plans in one fell swoop. This approach kills threes with one stone in that it puts in charge a highly trained, enthusiastic, and unbiased workshop leader, i.e., the Internal Auditor as facilitator. The use of a well regarded auditor who is independent of the operation and who does not report to management on any line function coupled with a well thought out approach and autonomous voting devises create a “safe place” for both staff and management to honestly volunteer their insights regarding “why things don’t work well”.

For years I have kept my own list of issues that surface in group dynamics that must be handled before the tremendous energies and insights of any group can be harnessed. Now, I know I’m not telling you anything that most of you don’t already know, but just as a refresher, the five killer bees of group workshops are as follows:

1. Lack of clear purpose
2. Lack of ground rules
3. Lack of candid input
4. Lack of consensus
5. Lack of a product

The Facilitated CSA Workshop Approach in its purest form is designed to and really does address each of these killer bees. It has a clear purpose, it is designed to draw out of the group a description of the biggest impediments to achieving the groups stated goals or objectives. It also has rules for interacting and participating that are founded upon proven rules of civility. The fact that the group all is asked to agree to observe the rules and support the facilitator in enforcing them is a huge advantage in keeping the interactions positive and constructive and depersonalized. The use of autonomous voting devises is so very helpful in drawing out of fifteen or so people their real thoughts and not their guarded ones. In all, 103 CSA workshops I have conducted the participants raved about how liberating autonomous voting was to them and how critical it was to getting their honest and real assessments of a process. The fact that we have facilitated CSA workshops in the commonly recognized politically sensitive environments for such elected offices as the Sheriffs Office, the DA’s Office, the Auditor/Controllers’ Office, the Treasurer’s Office as well as fifteen other departments in Orange County underscores the utility of this approach.

The use of software to capture in real time all the comments and votes of the group is another indispensable technique to ensuring that one outspoken person doesn’t dictate to the group his or her opinion or substitutes his or her opinion for the groups’ opinion. Vote tallies shown immediately on the pull down screen tell it all and tell it like it is. Getting the group to validate the vote through discussion prior to finalizing the group’s opinion is a powerful tool to overriding group think or an intimidation factor that may be present.

Last but not least, the fact that the entire process is captured on the computer and printed out at the end of the workshop as the agreed upon product is inspiring. It really gives legs to the CSA process and validates the effort of each individual as well as justifies the managers’ expenditure of staff time to this endeavor.

On a scale of seven with seven being the highest score one can give, all 102 of our CSA workshops average a 6.5 in benefits to the activity. The fact that over 2000 participants said they would recommend this process to their peers is why we have more requests than we could honor each year.

In conclusion, it is great to have a tool like the Facilitated CSA Workshop to respond to management’s requests for help in making their operations more efficient and cost effective activities.

Dr. Peter Hughes has served as the Director of Internal Audit for the Oregon University System, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and the County of Orange in California.