Listening increasingly snowed under
Listening: the core of the audit profession
No doubt you know that the word "audit" is derived from the Latin word "audire," which stands for "to listen. The word 'auditor' then literally translates to 'listener' or 'one who comes to listen.' And logically, then, the auditor is the "speaker. Clearly, listening is the essence of the auditing profession!
Assurance and its judgment may hinder
At the same time, the auditor is rather emphatically asked to make an assessment, or judgment, of the extent to which the organization succeeds in controlling risks. The internal auditor assesses the quality of governance, risk management and control. And making that judgment can get in the way of real listening. In IIA AuditMagazine (Haakma and Stoelwinder, 2013), the following three pointers for effective listening have therefore already been made:
- Start the conversation in full presence;
- Listen with an open, curious and value-free attitude;
- Listen on the basis of equality.
Listening is fortunately learnable
Recently, another article caught my attention, titled 'Then listen! We listen worse and worse, but fortunately we can learn to do it' (Beukers, 2020). Beukers interviewed Kate Murphy, who spent nearly two years conducting scientific research on listening. I found hopeful Murphy's thesis that listening can be learned. According to Murphy, it is a skill that does take a lot of practice. You get better the more you do it. In all that practice, it is very important to pay attention not only to what is being said, but also how it is being said and to ask yourself why people are saying something.
Murphy also advocates more silences ("after all, a silence without discomfort is a sign of good friendship"). You may also express that you need to think about something for a moment, showing that you are doing justice to what the other person said.
Why is listening so relevant?
I began to read more and more on the topic of listening. And over the weekend, over a good glass of wine, I asked myself: why am I actually so taken with the concept of listening? I listed a few explanations. First of all, I am quite critical of my own listening skills, but I notice when I do manage to really listen, it leads to valuable insights and beautiful connections. In addition, I came up with the following justifications for the relevance of listening for myself:
- In today's pandemic, life is tightening with the more limited opportunities to meet. We have fewer opportunities to listen to each other. In the sparse encounters (face-to-face, but especially online), it is important to determine through good listening whether the other person is really doing well.
- Like the majority of Dutch people (Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, 2019), I too feel that polarization continues to increase. I also seem to hear more and more shouting, screaming and assertions around me. Which in turn lead to new statements and reactions. Value-free listening is becoming increasingly unique or distinctive in a further increasing polarization.
- Psychological safety promotes job satisfaction, encourages an open feedback culture, contributes to innovation and employee engagement. But at a time when many organizations are all about survival, psychological safety comes under pressure. Specifically for auditors: in the absence of psychological safety (and trust), information is not shared out of suspicion, and fear and shame prevail to share reliable information with a listening colleague.
Do we still think listening is so important?
There are, as mentioned, not only fewer opportunities to listen at all. There are also more and more distractions that keep us from it. Just the 3,000 (advertising) messages we get fired at us every day create too many stimuli for the brain to process. Or what about our fears and habits, which make us prefer a digital screen to a face-to-face conversation, or which make us prefer sending an app to a phone call.
We like to engage in all kinds of social media. But it is precisely those social media that reinforce the proclamation of statements and the passing of an appreciation or judgment of that statement, by a like or dislike. They also provoke their own, new statements as a reaction.
Another interesting angle is, to look at what your and my children are taught in their education. Well, my son's education pays a lot of attention to all kinds of skills. Debating, pitching and presenting: they all come in plenty. But listening? That made me realize: recently the competency framework for Internal Auditors was renewed. I immediately went looking for the word listening, but unfortunately I didn't find it. However, there was a lot of emphasis on the importance of advocacy (which in my experience is mostly about "propagating" the importance of internal auditing) and stakeholder management.
Be even more distinctive by listening
Listening is at the heart of the auditing profession. So the relevance of listening to the auditing profession is high. In fact, the relevance of listening seems to be increasing. As an auditor, you can be even more distinctive if you are a good listener. Indeed, the emphasis is generally more on other skills than on listening. And all sorts of factors complicate good listening and the openness of sharing information. It has become even clearer to me: listening is difficult, but it is important and it can be learned and improved. In the near future, I will continue to work on my listening skills. Will you join me? Together we can revive listening.
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Sander van Oosten
Partner at ARC People
