In the book Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception, by Timothy Levine (a distinguished professor and longtime researcher of deception), I learned that it has been scientifically proven that it is very difficult to determine when lying and deception occurs. It’s just slightly better than a 50/50 proposition of detecting. Yikes.
Further, it is complicated by the natural tendency (also proven) of human beings to want to believe that everyone is telling the truth. And, to complicate things even further, the closer we are to someone, the less reliability there is in determining the truth or deception (also proven).
To me, the Bernie Madoff case is case in point. Those engaged in the financial services industry, and regulation of it, knew Madoff very well for decades but failed to uncover the “truth” of Madoff’s fraud scheme.
So, what does this have to do with internal auditing?
A lot.
One mission of internal audit is to uncover the real “truth and untruth” around culture, risks, and processes we should be focusing on at the organization. This ideally is accomplished by gathering as much information as possible from a multitude of sources, from as broad a cross section of an organization as possible.
But unfortunately, the surveys I have done in my live and virtual trainings indicate that about half of internal audit plans are built based on the introspective view of internal auditors or a very shallow sample of employees, usually managers and above. And the research about deception clearly indicates that the introspective view or shallow picture through the eyes of managers is not going to do much in presenting a true, honest picture to us. We may have some “deception” bias we weren’t even aware of.
So, without falling any further into the complicated field of deception, just know that the Total Quality Auditing point of focus, Feedback, teaches auditors how to gather as much data and information as possible from as many stakeholders as possible… which is our best bet to overcome this potential for “untruth” or hiding of the significant risks to our organizations.
Did deception get your attention?
Want to hear more about auditing culture & ethics, and learn techniques to obtain honest feedback at your organization?
The Total Quality Auditing webinars are happening again I would love for you to join! Oh, and you will receive a complimentary Total Quality Auditing® book and workbook (a $59.99 value).
