By Eliza Gano,

Associates have to face complex systems while on an audit. After the audit is completed, the thoughts developed in the field, the processes analyzed, and the notes taken must be converted into a concise, meaningful, and accurate report. There are many steps in the process, and the checklist provided by the client – in collaboration with the SQA Operations Team and Content Team – can help improve and refine the documentation of your report.

The checklist, which is often a deliverable, even if it is given to you only as a guideline, includes questions to address for each system element you are expected to review. Following the checklist thoroughly as you audit and as you write your report will ensure that you have hit every point the client expects you to explore. Then, any other elements you need to address become additional focus items (as discussed on your pre-audit call or provided to you by the client).

The checklist may seem like a simple, low-tech approach, but its value is evident across a spectrum of industries – a checklist isn’t solely for the auditing professional.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon who writes for The New Yorker when he’s not working at Harvard Medical School, is a huge proponent of checklists. He makes the case for using checklists in his book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

Surgeons, like any other profession, are human.

“We miss stuff. We are inconsistent and unreliable because of the complexity of care,” Gawande said in an interview to National Public Radio in January 2010. Gawande visited Boeing to see how things work and “over and over again they fall back on checklists,” he said. “The pilot’s checklist is a crucial component, not just for how you handle takeoff and landing in normal circumstances, but even how you handle a crisis emergency when you only have a couple of minutes to make a critical decision.”

Sully Sullenberger didn’t see himself as a hero when he brought the plane down in the Hudson River, an act that saved 155 people after it was hit by geese over Manhattan in 2009. Instead, he kept saying, ‘it was teamwork and adherence to protocol.’

Gawande has implemented the use of checklists in everyday practice and has not gone through a week of surgery where the checklist didn’t catch a problem.

As a Quality auditor, your ability to catch something critical using a checklist can also save lives. Using the checklists provided by SQA and our clients will ensure that your report aligns with client expectations and, in turn, requires less revision from the Content Team (and you) before it reaches the client’s review. And, when the report is accepted by the client, your success can be attributed to teamwork and adherence to protocol.