Auditor's Training

Dr. Sunitha Mathai is Actively involved in straitening and engaging human potentials within workspace. Preaching all that She practices in the field of Organizational Psychology through teaching and Research engagements. A passionate knowledge seeker with a high level of commitment in exploring one’s potentials and skills with a simple life goal of “ Give and receive all that you deserve”.

Mr. Samuel George is an ordained minister and a counselor by profession, bringing with him over two decades of hands-on fieldwork experience of working in the NGO sector both in regular and leadership roles. He has worked in India and the USA. He was the Aftercare Director for International Justice Mission, Bangalore office for seven before joining the Praveen Kenneth Leadership Chair at CHRIST (Deemed to be University). He works in administering the programs and activities of the chair. He has a master's degree in Sociology and a master's degree in Divinity.

Dr. Tony Sam George holds various leadership positions in the University. He is the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Head of the Department of Psychology, Additional Director, Center for Research. He serves as the Chief mentor for the Leadership Chair. He has over two decades of clinical and teaching experience. He has also received leadership training in ‘Academic Leadership’ at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. George serves as a positive source, resource, knowledge, and as an advisor to help the leadership chair reach its goals.

Mathai briefly mentioned the functions of internal auditing, significant outcomes of internal auditing, outcome obstacles, and she had also planned a self - reflective activity. The highlight of her presentation was the outcome obstacles under which she presented cognitive biases. Among the cognitive biases, hindsight, confirmation, groupthink, overconfidence, anchoring, availability, and blind-spot biases were presented. Her session was concluded with Self – Reflective activity in which all the participants were asked to reflect on cognitive biases which they have commonly encountered while auditing till now and how they can effectively deal with those biases.

Mr. Samuel George initially established the context on how this entire initiative of training from Praveen Kenneth Leadership Chair for auditors came into the picture. He added to the point on evaluation biases covered by Dr. Sunitha; to draw a correlation on decision making is effected the need to ensure inter-rater reliability. He included small reflection for all the participants using the circle technique – (Three things that are going well, one thing that is not going well, and one thing that they would like to change). He stressed the framework for the decision-making process as Process + People = Performance. Few other aspects covered during this session were decision making in auditing, collaborative decision-making style, auditors mindset – key components of inter-rater reliability, data-based decision-making process, three levels of decision making, accountability chain that was mutual for both the auditors and the auditee. and auditing culture that gives the auditees a positive experience.

Dr. Tony Sam George set the context with an initial discussion on whether we use the heart or brain during the evaluation process. He spoke about the emotional reactions involved in the auditing process and how to deal with them. He engaged the participants in a discussion on the emotional experience of an auditee, and thoughts that would be present just before an auditor visits the department. He spoke about immediacy and pre-empting concepts and how they help to deal with negative emotions and had the participants do some role-plays asking participants to interchange their roles as auditees and auditors. The group came to a consensus that they would put the auditee in ease and ensure that the auditing process would be a fair evaluation of the departments based on goals set but that it would also be an ensuring that it is a positive experience for the auditees as well in their approach to letting them know what needs to be done to meet standards going forward.