1. Internal Auditing and Root Cause Analysis
Audit Network Meeting February 2014

2. Responsibility of the auditee:
… A root cause analysis of any non-compliance should be conducted by the auditee in order to determine the most appropriate corrective and preventive action. …
Decision 2006/677/EC

3. A) Internal Audit

4. B) Follow-up of Audit Outcome

5. B) Follow-up of audit outcome ff.

6. Methods of root cause analysis, e.g.:
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, FMEA
Fault Tree Analysis, FTA
5 Why
Ishikawa Cause-and-effect-diagram, “Fishbone”

7. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, FMEA
systematic technique for failure analysis, developed by reliability engineers
forward logic
specific worksheets to identify failure modes and their effects
FMEA can be used as first step of a system reliability study

8. Fault tree analysis, FTA
deductive failure analysis, top down
for understanding how systems can fail

9. 5 Why iterative question-asking technique
5 results from empirical observations
„ by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear”
why did the process fail? (the last answer mostly points to a process, not to a person)

10. Ishikawa Cause-and-effect-diagram
syn.: fishbone diagram, herringbone diagram, cause-and-effect diagram
causes are grouped into major categories like men power, methods, machines, materials, measurements and/or milieu
each one is to be traced back further
diagram looks like a fish skeleton

11. Ishikawa Cause-and-effect-diagram

12. Root cause techniques might help auditors
to verify the effectiveness of actions plans of the CA, but also
to give an added value to the CA in the internal audit by non-superficial audit findings (pos./neg.) and useful recommandations

13. Thank you for your attention!13
Thank you for your attention!