The Audit Culture: More Than Finding Failures It’s About Building Trust (ISO 19011)

In internal and second-party audits, we often see a cultural clash: on one hand, Quality arrives on the shop floor as “the moment to take control,” and on the other, Production prepares for “how many things they’re going to point out.” And in between, top management sometimes acting as if this has nothing to do with them.

This disconnect turns the audit into an exercise of pressure, not improvement.

However, when you truly understand the foundations of a proper audit under ISO 19011:2018, the message is very different: an effective audit is built on communication, objectivity, and fair treatment.

Not on ego, fear, or fault-finding.

The standards never explicitly use the word “human,” but they make one thing very clear:

👉 we don’t audit people; we audit systems.

And systems have responsibility at every level: leadership, supervision, support, and of course, operations.

Yet in practice, we often see the opposite. The moment a nonconformity appears, the “witch hunt” begins:

“It was the operator on line 6, shift 1,”

“It was logistics, they didn’t follow the requirement,”

“The Operational leaders/ Shift supervisors lacked proper training”…

And almost always, the blame falls on those who are most exposed and under the most pressure: Operators, Operational leaders, Shift supervisors. People who often work without enough information, resources, or support.

But ISO 19011 does not ask us to blame anyone.

It asks us to identify the deviation, understand it, correct it, and prevent it.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

A strong Quality professional, especially one who has worked on the floor, close to the operation, knows that many deviations don’t originate “down below.”

They start above:

Rushed decisions to push production, lack of maintenance, operational overload, poor organization, weak communication, excessive turnover…

We measure how much we produce, but rarely how much it costs us in deviations, stress, lost time, constant retraining, quality errors, blockages, or rework.

That’s why, when I audit, I try to go beyond the checklist and the photos, which are fundamental tools, but just that: tools.

I ask about the real support they receive, how information flows, the resources available, and the decisions that impact the shift and the line.

The visible deviation is only the tip of the iceberg.

An internal audit is only truly successful when it stops being surveillance and becomes a learning tool.

When we stop “hunting for mistakes” and start understanding what made the deviation possible in the first place.

A human approach does not replace objectivity; it strengthens it. Without trust, there is no reliable evidence.

Because in the end, auditing is not about exposing anyone.

It’s about helping the team discover how to work better.