You CAN audit your own work!

What about the last sentence?

"For small organizations, it may not be possible for internal auditors to be fully independent of the activity
being audited, but every effort should be made to remove bias and encourage objectivity"​

 

Each organisation, who finds internal auditing as valuable thing, shall outsource audits were impartiality can be questioned.
I know personally example of automotive corporation, where even auditors from other entities were available, they had decided to invite 3rd party auditor to perform certain internal audit.

 

Yes they can, as long they do not mix 3rd party auditing with 1st party auditing for a same organization.
Even under IATF it is and shall be manageable according to certification rules.
Restrictions apply also to management system consultancy and site-specific auditor training.

 

Isn't that against their accreditation requirements?

 

I wrote 3rd party auditor instead of certification body full time auditors or contractors, sorry.
I meant 3rd party as warrant of competent and reliable auditing. I think you don't agree with my conviction, but that's other subject and we are OT.

Organisation is certified by CB No 1 and wants external auditor to perform internal audit. It asks CB No 2 to delegate their auditor to perform internal audit.
Everything is OK as long certifications body are not anyway affiliated or organisation does not switch certification to CB No. 2.

 

So my issue with my organization is that we as "Quality Auditors" aren't even allowed to work on our products. So my frustration is things to do on the down time of no products to audit which on slow days can be my whole day!
So I researched if Quality Auditors were even allowed to do the work and from what I found, we are not, we are to stay independent, for whatever reason. Well there is only so much auditing to do, so in what in the world can we do? I do not agree to this one bit, because us doing the work is also helping assure that we are sending a quality product out. It seems to me that us auditors should be more than welcome to do the work if possible, because we know what a quality product needs to be, therefore we are great candidates!! I'm so frustrated about this. Any feedback will help. Thanks.

 

Being objective and impartial cannot be demonstrated by just auditing somebody else's work. An internal auditor can still be biased and subjective even though he/she does not belong to the area/function being audited.

The guidance provided by ISO/TS 9002:2016 in clause 9.2.2 clarified that:

When assigning persons to conduct audits, the organization should ensure objectivity and impartiality of the audit process. In some cases, specifically in smaller organizations or areas of the organization where specific job knowledge is required, it can be necessary for a person to audit their own work.​

 

I work at 2 small companies (around 15 employees each) as QHSE Officer. We implemented ISO 9001 in the first company last year and had our Internal Audit done by an outside consultant (a supplier).

At the other company we implemented ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 shortly after, and I did the Internal Audit myself.
(I can tell you that my Internal Audit was actually of better quality than the one performed by the consultant.)
And yes, I did also audit the Internal audit process. The internal audit was discussed in the MR, that was docuemnted and then approved by the Managing Director.

We have passed certification at both companies without any NC.

Just thought I'd share that experience.