“Any issues during the audit?”

I asked this when my account manager passed me our audited accounts of one of my sdn bhd yesterday.

She said:

“Nothing major… but junior keep asking different queries every day.”

Not the same question.
Different questions.
Every day.

That one sentence reminded me of a client call some time ago.

“Mr Koh… every day your team ask new things. We cannot move forward like this.”

I didn’t argue.
I apologised.

But inside, I was thinking…

“How can the person-in-charge with 5 years experience before me still work like this?

That was when it became clear to me.

The problem is not repeating questions.
The problem is not knowing what to ask upfront.

Five years of experience means nothing if the basics are not respected. Clients don’t remember your qualifications or working experience.

They remember how you made them feel during the process “YOU are #%^$!”

So I sat down with my HR manager when this complain haunt me.

We made two decisions:

We keep that ex-staff firm in our “do not rehire” list in the future
We strengthen our training from Day 1

Not technical.

But expectation.

How to plan queries
How to think through the file before asking
How to ask everything needed… not piece by piece

Because in audit…

Asking questions is normal.

But asking in fragments…
Creates geram.

Clients feel like:

“Every day new problem.”
“Every day new request.”
“Work cannot finish.”

After 30 years, I realised this:

Clients don’t measure audit by hours.
They measure by how many times you disturb them.

That’s why in our firm, we TRY to enforce :

✔ One consolidated query list (as far as possible)
✔ Clear audit request planning

Simple discipline.
But very big difference to client experience.

If your audit feels long, messy, and never-ending…

Maybe it’s not the audit work.
Maybe it’s the way the questions are planned.

PS : Authored by Mr Koh Teck Peng, the group principal, in his personal LinkedIn post