Soft Skills for Auditors that Set You Apart

Internal auditors need technical expertise, data prowess, and extensive knowledge in auditing best practices. But there’s even more to your success in the profession. What are the most important auditor soft skills that set you apart throughout your career? Find out. 

Summary 

Developing auditor soft skills, such as effective communication, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and adaptability, is essential for navigating the socially complex nature of auditing, building trust with teams, and advancing professionally. 

What are auditor soft skills? 

Soft skills for auditors are the personal attributes, interpersonal behaviors, and emotional intelligence traits that promote effective and professional interactions, even when the situation is complex. 

Why are auditor soft skills important? 

As an auditor, your job is socially complicated by nature. You will work with many different teams and your job is to scrutinize their performance—requiring thorough analysis of all their data, reporting, findings, efficiencies (and inefficiencies), and more. Likewise, you need to effectively communicate your findings to higher management, all while maintaining an open and trusting relationship with the teams you’re auditing. 

While this delicate social position may be inherently difficult to navigate, enhancing your soft skills for auditors will ensure that you maintain positive and professional relationships with the teams you audit and the organization’s management. 

Top Soft Skills for Auditors

 #1: Communication and Interpersonal Skills 

Being able to communicate productively and professionally, no matter the personality, is absolutely necessary to your role as an internal auditor. 

The nuances of your communication and people skills should include: 

• Excellent Communication: Ranked as a top priority for employers, this includes the ability to articulate clear points of view during meetings, presentations, and negotiations. It encompasses both verbal communication—delivering findings in an objective, non-accusatory manner—and written communication, which should be precise, factual, and clear to minimize management disagreement.
• Active Listening: Attentive and reflective listening ensures that the auditor truly understands the auditee's perspective.
• Relationship Building: Auditing is fundamentally a "people profession," requiring the ability to build rapport and establish trust from the first interaction. This includes showing respect for auditees as subject matter experts in their specific fields while the auditor acts as the risk management expert.
• Persuasion and Negotiation: These skills are vital for navigating management disagreements and delivering difficult messages or negative audit outcomes productively. 
   

#2: Critical Thinking and Professional Mindset 

When you face a tough situation in the workplace, you need to be equipped with the skills to avoid a reactionary response, and instead maintain professionalism and a critical approach. This includes: 

• Analytical Thinking: Internal auditors need to view problems critically, identify patterns or anomalies, and make informed decisions based on interpreted data.
• Curiosity and Healthy Skepticism: Successful auditors practice the process of questioning information rather than accepting it at face value, showing a desire to dig beyond surface-level answers.
• Detail Orientation vs. Big Picture: Auditors must balance a meticulous attention to detail to ensure accuracy with the ability to understand the "bigger picture" to identify how those details impact the wider business.
• Business Acumen: Understanding industry trends and the wider business environment helps auditors connect their findings to the company's overall performance. 
   

#3: Emotional Intelligence and Ethics 

No matter what the situation, ethical and empathetic action must dominate in your auditing work. Remembering the delicate nature of your work and approaching your auditees with sensitivity, especially when delivering negative audit findings, will go a long way. Implement these skills: 

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This helps auditors maintain composure and focus under pressure, especially when dealing with anxious stakeholders.
• Empathy: Empathy will inspire you to take the time to understand teams’ actions and results, which will likewise inspire compassion as you engage with auditees.
• Ethics and Integrity: Acting as the conscience of an organization, auditors must remain unbiased and transparent to build long-term credibility.
   

#4: Adaptability and Growth 

Your ability to learn and grow with the organization and the profession is imperative to your advancement as an auditor. Implement: 

• Adaptability: Auditors must be able to flex their style for different audiences and navigate rapidly evolving environments, including shifts in technology and regulation.
• Continuous Learning: Fostering a growth mindset and a commitment to lifelong learning is essential for keeping up with changing audit areas, policies, and laws. If certified, you will need to complete Continuing Professional Education (CPE) requirements that you can leverage to improve your auditing skills.
• Teamwork and Initiative: Auditors must be able to collaborate within a team while also possessing the initiative to work independently, manage their own workloads, and own their decisions. 
   

Advance Your Auditing Career 

Auditor soft skills and your technical knowledge combine to advance your career as an internal auditor. However, you can grow even more by becoming a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA)—the leading credential that equips you with both technical and soft skills needed to excel in the profession. 

Learn all about how to become a CIA, passing the CIA Exam, and the unmatched beneifts that it brings to your auditing career in this FREE guide to CIA Exam.