Top 15 Compliance Auditor Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

This post provides detailed information and a list of compliance auditor skills and qualities that you need to be effective in your job and excel in your career.

Please, read on:

Two factors are very important for the success of any business. They are the external and the internal factors.

These factors play a key role to help keep the business running.

Considering the external factors, one of the things to consider is the relevant state and federal laws which control the operation of businesses within the geographical area.

That is why a compliance auditor is needed to ensure that the organization keeps in touch with the relevant laws guiding it.

Who is a Compliance Auditor?

A compliance auditor is either an internal or external auditor who accesses the operations of a business organization to ensure that they are in line with the laid down state and federal laws.

Top 15 Compliance Auditor Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

Here are important skills and qualities you need to be effective on the job of a compliance auditor:

1. Detail oriented
2. Good communication skills
3. Analytical skills
4. Decision making
5. Basic auditing skills
6. Quality management
7. Reporting skills
8. Business acumen
9. Integrity
10. Organizational skills
11. Innovation
12. Leadership skills
13. Teamwork
14. Time management
15. Knowledge of business laws.

1. Detail oriented

Auditing has a lot to do with investigation and clinical evaluation of processes.

It investigates a system and draws conclusions from findings.

This is why details are very important in auditing regardless how big or small such details might be.

To this effect, a good compliance auditor should be able to take note of every detail he/she comes across.

In this case, you should be watchful not to neglect or overlook any detail made available to you in the course of your auditing job.

You need to develop an eagle eye for details.

The little details you have will actually form part of the report and can still form the basis for your recommendation.

So, when you have this kind of job, eye for details should be one of the basic skills you should have.

2. Good communication skills

Your skill sets will not be complete if communication is not one of them. In all your getting, get excellent communication as a basic skill.

It is good and can be a quality to determine how far you can go in your job.

You have a good number of people to communicate with, ranging from your colleagues to other top executives in the organization.

Communication will be necessary if you really build a good relationship with the above mentioned people.

Also, note that you will need good communication skills during your enquiries.

This is important because it is through the results of your enquiries that you will be able to write your report and recommendations.

A good communication process will give you the desired result in your job.

3. Analytical skills

One of the most important skills to have as a compliance auditor is the analytical skill.

It is important because you will need to analyze your findings and the general system or mode of operation of the organization you are auditing.

Sure enough, one of the analytical tasks you may need to do is on the system’s operations of the organization.

This will serve as a building block for further enquiries related to the job you have at hand.

Another analytical task you will have to make is on the results of your findings.

You have to check for discrepancies and other irregularities.

This will help you make accurate report and recommendation.

If you can do these two forms of analysis, it will be a proof of your professionalism.

4. Decision making

The basic essence of carrying out compliance auditing is for decision making.

Through your investigation, you should be able to make decisions that will help the organization stay in touch with the contemporary State and Federal laws.

This decision is not necessary talking about you changing the way things are done in the organization, rather through your findings you should be able to bring to the knowledge of the managers of such organizations about some unhealthy practices, which may jeopardize the future of the organization.

This is your basic job, especially if you are an internal staff.

An external auditor may not do this. But if you are in any position to make recommendations and give advice, then you should do it with the best knowledge you have at your disposal.

5. Basic auditing skills

This is a way of reminding you of what you already know, or what you are expected to know.

Every job has its basics, likewise the job of a compliance auditor. You should know the basic auditing skills which you build upon to develop other related skills.

The basic auditing skills include enquiry, investigation, record of findings, and recommendations.

These are the basic skills you should build upon to be a good compliance auditor.

If you are ignorant or incompetent in this respect, then sorry to say you may not do well as a compliance auditor.

You should be able to make enquiries into happenings; investigate the happenings, record your findings, and draw your conclusions.

From your findings, you should be able to make relevant recommendations to the organizations to help adjust their operations.

6. Quality management

Working as an internal compliance auditor, the quality management of the organization is a lot dependent on how much of this skill you have.

Understand that you may not have the power to implement this decision but through your recommendations, they can take effect.

So, to ensure that your organization operates with utmost quality, you should be able to communicate your ideas through recommendations and be sure that your recommendations are implemented to the letter.

This is one of the ways you carry out your duties.

Never leave your organization in the dark about the relevant state and federal laws they need to know.

This could be catastrophic and counterproductive, and if that is the case, then the end of your job might just be around the corner.

7. Reporting skills

No auditing process is ever complete without a corresponding report that shows what activities were carried out and the corresponding findings and recommendations.

That report is the most important aspect of the whole auditing process.

However, a report is not presented anyhow.

Your report should be systematic, step by step recording of the whole process and the findings at each stage.

Though you have the summary, however, it may not tell the whole story.

You should be well skilled in knowing how to write a report.

Whether in handwritten form or typed form, your report should be systematic and should be simple to understand without any form of ambiguity.

This is important as any form of ambiguity can lead to some serious misinterpretation of the whole report.

8. Business acumen

To understand some details during the auditing process, you will need to have sufficient knowledge of business processes.

This is to say, knowing how businesses work will give you a hint as to why some things and activities are done in a certain way.

Also, understanding of some business laws can help you make relevant recommendations.

When you make recommendations, your recommendations should be able to make the organization align its activities with relevant laws, as well as help the business grow.

This is a two way thing.

You help the organization align its activities to the relevant state and federal laws as well as help the organization adopt strategies that can help it grow while maintaining the necessary standard of operation.

9. Integrity

For you as a compliance auditor, truthfulness and honesty will be necessary for you to make good reports and recommendations.

This is important as you will not become a tool to plant the downfall of your organization through insincere reports and recommendations.

You should work with the standard set by the State and Federal government to ensure the organization you are working for gets it right at all times.

You don’t apply sentiments and emotional attachments in this job because of how sensitive it is.

Though you are not expected to be harsh in your assessment, however, don’t be too lenient or engage in change of standard for any reason.

That is why you should make integrity your thing. You should be able to work with the standard set and nothing less than that.

10. Organizational skills

Auditing is a systematic approach towards making findings into the way things are done in an organization.

With this in mind, you should know that this brings you to the point where you have to be organized in your job.

You don’t do whatever you want and how you want it.

You must be organized with the different stages involved in the whole auditing process.

Be systematic and organize the different stages of the auditing process.

This may take time, but it is worth the wait. Quality is more important than any other thing in this process.

This is simple; you have to organize yourself, your activities, and the activities of other team members working with you from the beginning of the process to its ending.

It is necessary if you must achieve your desired result in the process.

11. Innovation

In every facet of life, innovation has always been the bedrock of good developments.

This is because innovation is a product of critical and creative thinking.

It is the result of taking time to analysis what is wrong with a system and what can be done about it.

So here’s the thing, your compliance auditor job description demands a lot of creativity for you to achieve a good and satisfactory result.

You should be able to think outside the box and get around challenges in the whole auditing process.

You need something entirely different from what people are used to.

As earlier stated, one thing is needed if you want to be innovative in your approach to this job: critical and creative thinking.

You should think critically and creatively.

Think deep and think outside the box. Just one idea can make a whole lot of difference.

12. Leadership skills

As you know, this job may demand that you work with a lot of people at different stages of the whole process.

However, you are the one to detect what the job of others working with you should be.

You should know that any mistake in the job will definitely be seen as a sign of irresponsibility on your part.

So, being the leader of the auditing team, you should be able to interact with your team on the nature of the job and what is expected of them at every point in the job process.

You should not leave your team in doubt as to what they should do at all times.

Also, you should inculcate in them some good work ethics.

This is necessary because if your team does not have this as a basic skill, then they are bound to make a mess of the whole process, thereby sabotaging the whole process.

It is all dependent on your leadership skills as the compliance auditor.

13. Teamwork

Though you are the leader of your team, however, it is important for you to still see yourself as a part of the team.

This means that you should relate well and ensure that the essence of having the team is achieved seamlessly.

This is not really easy, especially when working with different kinds of individuals.

You don’t have to be self-centered or consider yourself as the most important member of the team.

You have to work with your team, communicate with the team, and make sure that the team is focused on the task at hand.

This all starts from you the leader of the team. Whatever pace or standard you set for the team, that is what they will assume you want from them.

So, be careful to be a good example of what team spirit is. You don’t need to have a broken team before you do what is right.

14. Time management

You can agree with me that time matters a lot in whatever job you do.

Every day you have a specific task or tasks to accomplish and those tasks are expected to be accomplished within a limited time.

This is where you need to know how to manage your time.

In auditing, you are expected to finish the whole process within a specified time.

This means that you don’t have a million years to accomplish a task.

If that is so, then you have to rearrange yourself and your team to meet up with the given deadline.

So here’s the thing: gather your team and intimate them with what is required of them and the timeframe for every stage of the exercise.

This will help keep everyone on their toes and avoid procrastination and laxity due to thinking that there’s sufficient time to do the job.

15. Knowledge of business laws

Successful operation of businesses is dependent on the ability of the business organization to follow the relevant business laws.

This is important because business laws cannot be generalized, and they differ from one geographical location to another.

So first you have to understand and know the basic business laws operational in the geographical area where your organization is located.

You have to study the laws and know how to intimate the organization with those laws.

Remember that failure to know the relevant state and federal laws will be your undoing because you may not know the basis of judging the activities and the mode of operation of the organization.

This in turn can make a mess of the whole auditing process.

Compliance Auditor Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for the job of a compliance auditor, you can apply some of the above skills and qualities that you have in making the resume’s Skills section.

This can increase your chances of getting the job because it shows that you have the required skills and qualities to succeed on the compliance auditor job.

Conclusion

Regular auditing is one of the good practices to be done in every business organization.

This is to ensure that the operations of the organization are in line with relevant rules and regulations obtainable in the State.

This type of auditing is carried out by a compliance auditor whose job is to ensure that the organization under consideration keeps to the necessary State and Federal laws binding on all business ventures within that geographical area.

We have been able to list and explain some important skills and qualities that will enable you to excel as a compliance auditor.