Turtle Diagram, a simple tool for auditing.

By Diego Ayala.

Do you remember the first audit you did? Was it satisfactory? was it frustrating? was it friendly? Was it effective? Did you feel that you did not do your job because you did not leave non-conformities, or did you leave delighted because you left quite a few non-conformities? Indeed, before starting your first audit, you wondered how the result of the audit and interview process would be. You asked whom you were going to audit with whom you would face; all these questions are common in the first audit we do as internal auditors or in any audit process. Even if you were the most prepared, you realized along the way that you missed something to ask or delve deeper into some topic, and most likely derived from this first audit, you did not leave satisfied.

We have always been told that checklists are an excellent guide to an audit, which is correct. However, this checklist is the beginning of great learning in the audit process; it is more of a teaching tool for the auditor, in which he has the script of all his “movies” rather than seeing the content and expectations of that “movie.” Surely, over time, you will realize that this checklist is becoming less and less effective since the sequence of questions versus the auditee’s answers does not carry a certain congruence, which will continue to frustrate us.

In this sense, a multidirectional tool can be used to carry out an audit with a more flexible methodology that is very easy to understand: the Turtle Diagram, a simple tool for auditing.

How does it work? If we take as a basis that “Processes” have “Input Elements (IE) and Output Elements (OE) and have the “4 basic questions” to “document” a process, we can interpret it as in the following image:

If we add the other clauses to the process (what corresponds to it “as a process”), we will indeed have a very well-documented process; in other words, almost the entire standard (ISO 9001 is taken as a reference, but it can be any standard), is immersed in this “Turtle Diagram”:

This would be the “same principle” to conduct a proper audit, considering the “should of the standard” when asking questions. Based on this, we can determine the different “Audit Paths” to conduct and conclude a simple and efficient audit process; referring to the “Audit Path,” you can do the audit from left to right, top to bottom, diagonally, or vice versa. It is all about performing the audit based on a Turtle Diagram.

Example: Audit Trail: from “Left to Right.”

This example is from left to right, but you can choose the “audit path” that best suits the audit you perform. With this simple tool and understanding of its concept, any audit challenge you are given will be easy to complete.