Why Auditors Feel Bullied

At some point in your career, there is a very good chance someone is going to call you an idiot. If you are an auditor, the chances are actually 75% according to a recent study.

I’ve been on both sides of this conversation. I have been the auditor who feels attacked, and I have been the person calling the auditors idiots. Recently, I had a new experience, and I was called stupid by an auditor. I completely understood the auditor's frustration in that moment. She wanted some documentation quickly, and I needed her to file the request in the system so I could upload it properly per our procedures. All of this got me thinking about the root cause of this situation. As an auditor, I felt like people were trying to intimidate me. As the one being audited, I felt like the auditors had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I’m pretty sure both of these statements are true.

Knowledge a Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

Auditors need to know a little bit about a lot of things. They need to understand your processes, identify risks, and test your controls. Plus, they need to follow their own internal procedures on how to document their work. If they get something wrong, they are likely to get coached by their managers, which can feel punitive in a highly competitive environment.

Subject Matter Expertise

The person in the business role, the one getting audited, is expected to be a deep subject matter expert. Auditors will often set up calls to walk through the process or application they won with no agenda or context. They should be able to answer all of the obscure questions thrown at them on the spot, or else it looks like they are hiding something or at least being difficult. Of course, this is not true at all.

Power Dynamics

Having sat on both sides of these calls, I have come to understand that the real issue is an unstated power dynamic. Auditors feel like managers are trying to bully or intimidate them. Managers are frustrated when auditors ask simplistic questions. They see a highly paid auditor who seems completely out of their depth, asking questions they have no business asking. BUT the auditors have too much power. They can decide to write issues and make life hard for the team.

In a recent encounter, an auditor asked questions about a password setting for an application. To the IT team, the question was stupid. The answer was common knowledge. The auditor did not know the answer and was obviously going down a checklist of questions. The IT team lashed out, saying the auditors needed to bring someone who knew more about basic IT. The auditors felt bullied and reported the IT team to their partner. Both were right, and both were wrong. The auditors should probably have known the particular system better since it is widely used, but the IT team should not have lost their composure.

Empathy to the Rescue

Empathy is the only sustainable solution to this recurring tension. Not better checklists. Not more documentation. Not more mandatory trainings. Empathy.

When people feel threatened—auditors or auditees—they react emotionally, even when the dispute is really about process, timing, or misunderstandings. The moment either side believes the other is acting out of incompetence or bad faith, the conversation breaks down. Empathy requires acknowledging a simple truth: everyone in the room is under pressure.

Auditors are under pressure to finish the engagement, avoid review notes, maintain independence, and still build relationships with the business. They often don’t get the time or training needed to understand every system they must evaluate. Their questions sometimes sound basic not because they’re incompetent, but because they’re trying to validate facts and ensure accurate evidence.

Process owners and technical teams are under pressure to keep the business running, avoid delays, and protect their time from what feels like “extra” work. When they hear a question that sounds painfully obvious, it can feel like the auditors are wasting their time or misunderstanding how the business actually works. Neither side is wrong for feeling what they feel, but both sides lose when empathy is absent.

Bridging the Gap

The solution is not to make auditors deep technical experts. It’s not to train process owners to speak in audit language. The real opportunity is to shrink the psychological distance between the two groups, not the structural one.

A few practical approaches make an immediate difference:

1. Set expectations early.
Before every audit, both sides should agree on timelines, communication channels, and the level of detail expected. Surprises cause more conflict than complexity.

2. Ask for context before reacting.
When a question sounds basic, consider that the auditor may be validating a control, not testing your intelligence. When a process owner hesitates, they may be double-checking accuracy, not hiding something.

3. Respect each other’s expertise.
Auditors know risk, controls, and evidence. Process owners know systems, processes, and constraints. When these skill sets are treated as complementary—not adversarial—the audit becomes collaborative.

4. Slow down the heat.
If a conversation becomes tense, pause and reframe. A five-second reset often prevents a two-week conflict.

The Real Root Cause

People do not get angry because a question is stupid. People get angry when they feel disrespected, unheard, or judged. The power dynamic makes every interaction feel higher-stakes than it truly is.

When you lead with empathy, you shift the dynamic entirely:

• Auditors feel safe asking questions.
• Process owners feel respected for their expertise.
• Both sides stop assuming the worst.
• Issues become learning moments—not personal attacks.

Ironically, when empathy increases, the audit quality improves. Better conversations lead to better evidence, better understanding, and better controls.

The Bottom Line

Someone will eventually call you an idiot in your career, auditor or not. That’s the cost of working with other humans, but you don’t have to repeat the cycle. Empathy turns conflict into collaboration. It helps you see that the “idiot” on the other end of the call is just someone trying to do their job under pressure, just like you. If there is one skill that will transform the audit experience for both sides, it’s not technical knowledge. It’s the courage to pause, assume positive intent, and treat each other like partners in the same mission. Audits stop feeling like battles and become what they were always meant to be when we work together to make the business stronger.