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Name a better duo. I’ll wait.
Maybe audit is different, but all this stuff about chain of command is a bunch of inefficient horse shit and I can guarantee you that the client would be livid if they knew every question had to filter through some pointless hierarchy for no good reason. If a lower level staff needs an answer and the fastest most reliable answer is only available from a partner/director that staff should not be wasting time talking to anyone aside from the partner/director with the answer.
First things first, you need to be more careful providing quite so many details on here because I guarantee that partner could identify you if they read the description you gave.
If your partner wants you to follow the chain of command then do it religiously and CC the partner on every. single. communication. as you slowly go up the chain of command. Ask your questions in an open-ended format so whoever responds has to provide an explanation rather than saying “yes, this is right” or “no, that is wrong”.
If you do this then it is likely that one of two things will happen. Your question will be immediately answered by whichever person you are asking or the partner will jump in and answer for them instead, or the partner will see you (obnoxiously) following the chain of command and realize the error of their ways and stop being such an ass. There is also some chance that if the partner is really a jerk and a bad leader that they will fire you for being a smart ass, but at the end of the day you will know you were in the right.
Maybe they wanted you to email instead of ping? It’s stupid though because they should not have directors and partners be able to ping. Or maybe they wanted the manager to ask instead of you? I wonder why the manager did not reach out to the director and cc you..I see you as being proactive more than “violating” the chain of command. It’s corporate America after all. This is really stupid. Sorry OP! Besides technical knowledge, you need to watch out for certain personalities.
The fact that you lost 3 of 4 directors in one year implies that the partner is a complete asshole. So makes sense that they would pick on their senior.
OP - what were your other options? Who else on the team could you have spoken to before going to the Director? I just don’t quite understand yet how you didn’t follow the chain of command
TLDR- easy to pick when you’re pulling 500k a year.
I would bet money you recieved "the talk" because the director probably asked that Partner why he had to reach so far up to get a question answered that should have been answered long before it got to her.
It’s me (Senior 2) and part-time manager who didn’t know the answer to my question which was in response to the Core Audit Partner. How else should I have handled this situation? Partner is quick to point out when something is wrong but also doesn’t tell me how to fix it. We’ve lost 3 directors in the past month and only have 1 directors left and brand new manager so it’s hard to understand who I should bubble things up to, since essentially the director knows the client (8+ years) best and essentially runs the project. Advice?!
Use the chief auditor network instead. Fuck crabby partners.
Unfortunately, you ran into a POS director. My only advice is to first reach out to the manager and if they don’t know, email the director (cc manager) and ask them if you could discuss. Sometimes I skip all that and schedule a phone call with the partner to obtain more clarification on what their question means.