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When the team sends their deliverable draft.
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Hello - hope everyone is having a great weekend. I'm looking into risk assurance opportunities at Meta, especially Application Manager, Controls (min 5 YOE) and Manager, Compliance (min 12 YOE). I am a Senior Manager with 9 years of IT risks assurance experience. Does anyone have any thought on which position I should apply? If anyone currently at Meta could share your experience, that would also help. If anyone is open to providing referrals, I could provide my background. Facebook (Meta)
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As someone on the other side... make sure your questions aren't stupid too.
Agreed with SA1 and PWC4 - being on “the other side” I constantly see auditors come in and ask my SMEs stuff that they look at me and send back just automated AWS or SQL documentation that explains how the tool/app/module works. Irks me to no end when my SMEs have to spend audit time explaining how a common tool works or what syntax means. That or asking for multiple interviews because they forgot something / didn’t ask the first time.
Practice.
Try to understand what your objective is. Do you want to know what to use to evidence DET and OET of the control? Do you want to understand the risks or the end to end process?
Always state your objective first to the client. It’s much helpful than asking them questions without them understanding what you’re trying to achieve.
Ex. Your my trainer and ask me how my weekend was.
I tell you that I ate breakfast, slept at 10pm and that’s the end of my answer.
But in reality your objective was to know if I exercised during the weekend.
Hi in addition to what everyone else has said, be comfortable in silence (give them time to respond). Also expect short/direct answers. Respect their time, you can send questions ahead of time and then focus on items that need clarification or things that really can’t be explained through email.
Get comfortable with silence. Eventually they will speak.
Practice.
Practice with your career coach or a colleague. Ask someone to review your prepared questions. Make sure they’re open ended.
Yup open ended questions are the way to go, let the control operator blabber on enough and they’ll lead you to the answer!
Working at this myself but I think about what sort of questions my managers like to pose. I also try to create scenarios in my head that may get around their processes and play “what if”.
Trying to learn this as well :(
If you get the feeling that they’re annoyed or unwilling to answer questions, always have an explanation ready for why you need the info. They may just not understand why something is relevant and be frustrated that you’re asking questions they think are pointless. If I ever feel like the client is annoyed at the questions I’m asking, I’ll say something like ‘to give some background/context, we require this because we need to confirm ___ / it will provide ___ for our testing around ____”.
At the beginning, I definitely over-prepared because of nerves but that me helped a LOT. I’d think of responses they could have to my questions, and then have relevant and thoughtful follow up questions to their potential responses, to kind of guide the walkthrough in the right direction and better flow into other areas of questioning. I feel like that’s better / less awkward than to ask a question, have them respond, say ok thank you, pause, and then just ask another unrelated question, repeat. But getting better at walkthroughs also just happens with more experience, you’ll get into a groove with it and be completely comfortable eventually.
Agendas. Prep. Practice.
Some clients suck and are purposefully difficult. I handle tough clients by sticking to the facts. I go into walkthrough meetings knowing the entire process so when they try and give me a hard time by staying quiet I’m able to ask leading questions. I don’t have them reiterate info that was previously communicated to our team. I’ve done both internal audit and external audit and have seen some crap by clients. You learn by attending these meetings and watching how others communicate. It will take time. You will one day be a fabulous interviewer because you are even asking this question ☺️
These are all great answers.. I always like to set expectations prior to the actual meeting… if I need them to be able to walk me through an example - it’s in the invite and/or an email prior to… if they’re new- sometimes I’ll share the types of questions I’ll be asking so it’s less nerve wracking for them. I think at the end of the day - no one wants to be embarrassed by being unprepared or awkwardly put on the spot