It shouldn’t matter even if it’s the last hour. If you like doing what you do, if you’re good at what you do, it shouldn’t matter at all even if it’s almost time for you to pack up and get going. You continue doing what you like, you continue doing what you’re good at. And it’s just not about ensuring a lasting legacy.
Yeah, why should we be concerned about building our legacy, when we are hands full with building the present and shaping the future of the entities we serve? And when we’re fully invested in the present and shaping the future, legacy is a natural by-product, an unintended deliverable amongst all the planned ones.
This legacy is reputation. And for a professional auditor, integrity, competence, independence, objectivity and commitment are the ingredients that maketh this reputation that in time becomes a lasting legacy. Something to look up and live by! So that’s exactly what the legacy looks and should look like.
And that’s to happen, not to make happen! The professional auditors need to be uncompromisingly and consistently their usual best for the client entities they serve, and the legacy can take care of itself since its already in the making. This legacy is best served with being the usual best, not caring about it.
And it’s definitely not served by letting the work be! You can’t build a legacy by ignoring the demands and expectations from your work, even if it’s the last hour. Since if the last hour doesn’t motivate you to give another personal best, you might not have given your personal best ever!
If the last hour consumes all your energies into thinking and believing that you have come a long way and that you don’t need to offer anything anymore, you’ve already left behind the entity you gave your best. This can’t be a parting note of a professional auditor.
Because our parting notes shouldn’t be any different than the notes (read reports!) we have and have been delivering. It’s not to say that this should be a scathing report of sorts or be something like the organization hasn’t witnessed already or that one shouldn’t issue a thankyou note.
The point is, it can still be a power packed, value adding report wrapped in a thankyou note as the professional auditor’s parting note. Simply because nothing short of that is expected of a professional auditor. Weren’t we known for adding value through all those reports? Wasn’t that the identity we carved out for ourselves when we worked for the client?
So, why should the moving on be any different? Simply because we’re moving on? And it’s better to leave by making client happy rather than making it say out loud, “good riddance”? Well, this good riddance is going to come irrespective of how the auditor choses to exit. And well, it won’t be something new for the auditor.
Yet, some of us still choose to call it a day in a manner that’s characteristically different to what they’re and have been and prefer to have a rather ‘sweet’ parting. And that’s baffling. How not being yourself and not being the same as you’ve been with the client throughout, you’re parting ways with, at the end of your stint, helps to even dilute your bada** reputation?
To me it’s more like shredding one’s reputation, making people at clients believe that the professional auditor is seeking to placate them for what happened to them as a result of past audit reports or worst, the auditor is seeking redemption!
And for me, that’s very unlike a professional auditor, as for the professional auditor the redemption comes from finishing it exactly the way it has always been or in an even professionally brutal manner if one gets lucky. It definitely doesn’t come from not being yourself even if it’s for once only!
But let’s identify the possible reasons why auditors behave differently when it’s time to move on and kill these right here:
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Behaviors |
Why they’re Stupid? |
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I’ve done what I needed to and delivered many times over |
So, there’s nothing left to do / to add value to? Or you don’t find it in yourself to deliver anything worthwhile anymore? The fact that you’ve done what you needed to is what you were required to do and what you delivered many times over elated you so why would you now consider going down rather than simply moving on? |
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What’s the use of doing anything now? |
Well, doing anything and everything now has the exact same utility that it had before. If it were worth something then, it would be worth something now! |
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Someone else would do it / take care of it |
Being a professional auditor, did you ever left something you wanted to do and was expected to be done by you for someone else? If that’s the case, sure, don’t do it! |
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My last deliverable might not get the traction it deserves |
Up till the last hour, you’re still the entity’s professional auditor, and if there’s a system in place (that you helped develop / evolve) for the audit deliverables and the management actions on them, why wouldn’t it work? |
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My salary might not be released |
Was it or any other contractual emolument ever stopped before on the basis of your report / finding? If yes, then how are you still working for such an entity? If not, then how could this be a possibility now when you’re leaving it? ‘Good riddance’ remember? |
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I might not be able to secure a recommendation / experience letter |
Recommendations / Experience Letters aren’t the only or principal means for employment verification. You can always ask for these later whenever possible or escalate its requirement to the apex governing body to which you’ve reported. |
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I am not doing s**t, I am in exit mode |
Yeah, the most plausible of all. It is this reason that could actually be the real reason behind every other reason. Its stupid because you might be in exit mode, but the entity you serve till your last day in office and for which you will be fully compensated, is in continuation mode. |
If it’s about the exit mode, I’d in fact suggest not to serve any notice period and quit effective immediately so that the entity can ensure that it’s internal audit services do not face disruptions. Because like I said, the entity isn’t in exit mode!
The last hour is meant to be just another hour before transition happens both for the auditor and for the entity it serves. And thus, our conduct shouldn’t be any different to what it has always been, characteristically auditor like!
I closed it in style. I did what I have always been known for. I went all out. Gave it another best shot. Made it another of my usual best.
It was so big a deliverable that it laid bare everything. There was this light that exposed the darkness left all around me. It meant so much that suddenly it meant nothing at all.
Nothing was left, nothing that could make sense or could mean anything. It wasn’t that I kept it for the end, the place was being ripped apart, and this was all coming.
But down to this last hour, I finished as a champ in oblivion! My last hour was all the same, like it was meant to be!
And I had my sight set on to the next engagement. The GRC evolutions and improvements expected of us can’t wait and neither can we!