Managing Difficult Clients During the Audit

Sam breaks down why audit clients become difficult, distinguishing between inherent personality challenges and stress-induced resistance that auditors can actually influence. He shares specific tactics for staying proactive rather than reactive, from setting crystal-clear expectations and over-communicating to documenting every interaction and knowing when to escalate internally. The conversation covers everything from recognizing early warning signs to maintaining professionalism under pressure, and even when it might be time to walk away from a client relationship.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Audit Smarter
• (03:13) - Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Clients
• (06:04) - Identifying Red Flags Early On
• (14:17) - Proactive Communication and Setting Expectations
• (22:42) - The Importance of Overcommunication
• (23:18) - Effective Communication Strategies
• (25:17) - Handling Difficult Clients
• (27:30) - Maintaining Professionalism Under Pressure
• (33:33) - Empathy vs. Sympathy in Auditing
• (35:21) - Dealing with High-Risk Clients
• (39:37) - Exiting Client Relationships Professionally
• (42:14) - Conclusion and Next Steps

Learn more at https://mansouradvisory.com/

Connect with Sam
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-mansour-cpa-2a755b271

Connect with Abdullah
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdullah-mansour-454959108 

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This podcast is a production of the Earmark Media

Creators and Guests

Host

Abdullah Mansour

Co-Founder & COO at Mansour Advisory Group

Host

Sam Mansour, CPA

CEO of Mansour Advisory

What is Audit Smarter?

A practical podcast series that transforms audit professionals from checkbox practitioners into strategic advisors. Each episode tackles a specific audit challenge—from risk assessment mistakes to client management—providing actionable solutions through real-world examples and practical frameworks. Learn to deliver higher-quality audits in less time while avoiding the most common pitfalls that plague the profession.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Abdullah Mansour: Welcome back to Audit Smarter. I'm your host, Abdulla mansoor. And today we're focusing on client dynamics, specifically how to manage difficult clients during the audit. Sam, let's start with the obvious. What makes a client difficult in your view?

Sam Mansour: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because depending on kind of how the audit [00:00:30] goes itself, that could kind of dictate whether or not the client is, you know, difficult or not. I've had a lot of clients that over time they start out as difficult clients but become good clients because they kind of calmed down. So I think there's this initial like tension that comes with having a new auditor. So you coming out there, you're asking them questions. Um, they're trying to do their jobs and you are in there taking up a lot of their time. So [00:01:00] I think there's, you know, this understanding that I think as auditors, we need to have that it's really difficult to know whether a client is difficult or not until you kind of get past that screen or that distraction of the newness between the auditor and the client. Right.

Abdullah Mansour: So the question settles in a little bit.

Sam Mansour: Exactly. You kind of need to let things settle a little bit. And I feel like the client [00:01:30] will make a determination whether or not they want to be cooperative and interact well with you, or if this is going to be a really hard and difficult experience between you and the client. And I think a lot of that depends on kind of how you set the stage as the auditor to begin with. So to me, it's not as simple as is the client a difficult client or an easy client because that's just who they are. I mean, it is eventually it is. But [00:02:00] I think before you even get to that point, there's this cloud of fear, emotions, stress that they might be under. I would say that they're usually under by having someone brand new, potentially, if you're a new auditor, come in and ask to see some of the most sensitive information that pertains to the work that they've been doing or overseeing, and you're going to tell them you're not going to. This isn't a thing where they could get like a [00:02:30] reward for doing well. It's more of a either they do well and they pass the audit and then nothing changes or they do poorly.

Abdullah Mansour: So it feels like it feels like overall there's only bad that can come from it. Is that kind of what you're.

Sam Mansour: Either neutral effect like.

Abdullah Mansour: Neutral. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. I mean because they don't get they don't get a reward or a party for passing the audit usually, usually it's just like, well yeah, you need to pass the audit because it's part of your job. Uh, CFO, you know? And if you don't, [00:03:00] you're in trouble. So there's no real like they don't get a bonus usually for doing well in the audit because it's just, well, they should have been doing well during the audit because they should have done their job. So it's just it's a stressful experience. So I think I think it's important to understand that before we know if a client inherently is good or good to deal with or difficult to deal with, it's important to understand that we have to kind of get past this cloud of stress and emotion and the auditor and their involvement [00:03:30] and their and their initial interaction with the client could be very impactful here. So, for example, if a client is, uh, inherently a good client, but they're stressed out and they kind of like maybe they're puffing their chest, maybe they're making this a little bit more complicated than it should.

Sam Mansour: And you as the auditor, kind of like really like grind at them and say, you know what? If they're going to be difficult, this is going to be hard, right? And you start to communicate abrasively with them then then they're generally not going to like, calm down and be easy to deal with. But if they're an easy [00:04:00] client and they're just kind of stressed out and they're kind of, you know, maybe puffing their chest initially and you and you don't take it personally and you just you're calm, then they'll calm down, right? And they'll kind of come to their normal place where it's like, wow, they're easy to deal with. A good example, I worked with this lady. She was very, like, micromanaging of her accounting world. She, you know, she she, in her mind, knew everything about everything in her department. And if I were to question her or ask her about anything in her department that [00:04:30] that that maybe she missed, she was gonna, like, flip her. You know what?

Abdullah Mansour: Because very defensive.

Sam Mansour: Exactly. So very difficult person to deal with initially. But when I kind of figured out that that's how she was, and she actually did a really good job, I was very cautious of coming in and and and putting in her face what she might have done wrong. So like my approach was [00:05:00] softer, so it would be more of a hey, yeah, you know, I was looking at this invoice and wow, like all these other invoices were documented properly. Everything looked great on them. But this one, I wonder, am I missing something? Like kind of like like giving her the benefit of the doubt instead of coming at her and saying this is wrong. So yeah, taking more of that approach diffused the situation. She was a good client in terms of like her audit doc, her the the documentation that she provided us for our audits was exceptional. Um, [00:05:30] but her she is a person was very anal about just what she did in life. And so, uh, like that always remained a difficulty. Right. But I got the benefit of a clean audit of organized files, of a quick in and out audit. Like, I didn't have to spend a lot of time there stress questions, follow ups because she did such a good job. And I didn't raise the tension on the personal side of things because I understood that was the way that she was.

Sam Mansour: Aside from that, you [00:06:00] know what can make a client a difficult client? So, you know, clients are different when they, um, are they're difficult when they consistently miss deadlines. I mean, that's just like, let's just speak in general. Like, that's really hard when they resist questions. And if they react defensively to findings like that's common behavior. And a lot of auditors see this when a client is defensive, when they miss deadlines and then they were when they're defensive or when they're [00:06:30] defensive to findings. So you can make them defensive again kind of back to how what we were talking about with those clients and kind of that that emotion and the stress, you can make them more, um, defensive. You could actually, to some degree make them miss deadlines because they don't like you. They don't want to work with you. They don't want to help this process. They just the last thing they want to deal with is what you're asking for. And they can resist questions because you're, you know, [00:07:00] not you're you're a very abrasive person. You're putting them on the, on the defensive. So it's not all the auditors fault, but I think the auditor can have a key impact in a situation where again, you have two clients, one client is inherently not difficult.

Sam Mansour: Another client is inherently difficult. Inherently, inherently difficult clients, they're just going to be difficult. The inherently non difficult clients, they might be difficult initially but you can calm them down. So they're not they're not they don't resist. They don't miss deadlines. You can kind of coach them through it. So just depends on kind [00:07:30] of what scenario you are. I find inherently most people are not difficult to deal with if we if we kind of manage them properly. Another aspect would be, um, some try to challenge or influence the auditors conclusions. That is a difficult client because they they're just angry or frustrated with what you're coming up with. And so instead of saying, yeah, fine, I accept it, they push back and they cause a lot of resistance, and they put up a lot of roadblocks and and they want to [00:08:00] talk to you. Let's say you're the the senior manager on the audit and you're coming to this conclusion. They have to talk to the audit partner, and they want the documentation to be scrutinized and they don't agree with it. And is there any way around it that could be very challenging. And then.

Abdullah Mansour: Others imagine.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. And then others just aren't ready. I mean, they have poor record keeping, limited access. Um, they give us limited access to what we need when we need more access or they're unresponsive. Um, you know, when we contact them. So, so essentially, [00:08:30] you know, the idea here is you have to kind of be thinking, is this person inherently difficult or are they inherently not difficult? And am I distracted by the cloud of stress and emotions? Once you relieve the cloud of stress and emotions? Generally, I find clients to be not difficult, but sometimes you could just be sitting with some difficult ones. And I think the strategies are different from person to person. But but I think as an auditor, we need to understand what kind of person we're dealing with [00:09:00] outside of that cloud of emotion and stress.

Abdullah Mansour: That totally makes sense. Your first point was interesting that it's only negative or neutral, and that can be very difficult, uh, really for anybody in any role. There's no like upside. There's no like positive side to it. Maybe auditors can carry, uh, trophies around or something and give them out for a job well done. Uh, but how do you how do you recognize a difficult client early on in the engagement? I know we talked about difficult [00:09:30] times in general, but how would you assess just from the start of an audit? How do you how do you kind of recognize that?

Sam Mansour: Yeah. I mean, the clients that are not difficult, but maybe they're stressed out. Um, they will still have good documentation. They'll still have good procedures, right? I mean, in their in their processes. So some red flags would be, you know, they don't have they are missing PVC deadlines. So you have PVC list. You have deadlines in there. They can't meet them. They can't get get us what we need on [00:10:00] time. I mean that's just a disorganized person right. Whether they're.

Abdullah Mansour: Difficult. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: Whether back to my point, if they're a difficult client or a non difficult client, inherently the problem clients are going to miss deadlines, vague responses. Um, you know, they are afraid if they give you the detail that you want, you're gonna find a problem with what they're saying. So they're vague. Um, that's kind of inherently a client that's going to be difficult. Um, and then tension during the walkthroughs, like, so it kind of comes this is a little bit [00:10:30] more difficult because if you're talking to a non difficult client, there might be some tension during the walkthroughs because they're not feeling comfortable. So you kind of try to try to read the room. The other scenario would be that they're inherently difficult client, but you can kind of feel like it's not just that they're uneasy during the walkthroughs, but they're just they don't want to be there. You know, they're like, they're just really you can sense it's not. It's not that they're kind of shy attention. [00:11:00] It's it's like frustration what it's going to be over with. Like why are we asking these questions? This is repetitive I already asked I was already asked this by the last auditors. Why didn't you get this from this other person? You know, they're kind of doing that to you disgruntled or. Yeah, exactly. They you need to be able to sit down with them and conduct the interview with this person specifically, maybe because you're trying to corroborate information from another person. So maybe you did get information via another interview and maybe they are right, but you want [00:11:30] to hear their side of it. Um, but they don't. But they're like, well, why do you need this from me? Right. So it's.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: But you need it because you need to find a discrepancy between what this person is telling you, what another person's telling you, but they put.

Abdullah Mansour: Up.

Sam Mansour: Roadblocks. Um, and then I would also like, watch for communication breakdowns if emails go unanswered or information is delivered in pieces. Um. Expect challenges. So, I mean, if communication fails [00:12:00] and it's clunky and it's disorganized, and I think we talked before about the strategic PBC list and organizing it and having deadlines. Um, and the auditors communicated regularly to make sure clients are meeting the deadlines, you know, managing the client. So if you do all the right things, but they still don't read your emails and respond to them, they still send things in pieces, right? Uh, we need ten bank reconciliations, and they send us 1 or 2, and then they send us 1 or 2 more, and they send us 1 [00:12:30] or 2 more. And then those bank reconciliations are missing specific listings like the checklists. It's just like, oh my gosh, like this is going to be very challenging.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: Um, that's early on a red flag, right? So missing deadlines, vague responses, tension during the walkthroughs, communication breakdowns, unanswered questions, piecemealing things to you. Uh, those are kind of a bag of things that if you think.

Abdullah Mansour: About early indicators.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. [00:13:00] I mean, if, like, for example, if you're trying to meet with someone and the first meeting, they're late. Okay, maybe something wrong happened. The second meeting, they're late again. They're like, well, I'm kind of starting to see a pattern here. The third meeting, they're late again. I mean, all okay, it's it's like maybe, maybe there's three things that just happened that caused them to be late three times in a row. But you don't need to wait for the 50th meeting to conclude that they are inherently a late person. [00:13:30] Right.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: So early on, you can start to see these red flags, just like someone being late to a meeting. And I think a lot of us, like as auditors, were so jumping around in all over the place with different clients that maybe we have a hard time seeing the signs, but, uh, but these are signs that they are going to be difficult. They're inherently disorganized. Um, maybe maybe it's not just if they're disorganized in their communication. [00:14:00] Generally, I found that they're disorganized in the work that they do them at the core of it. Right. Because if they can't handle communication, which is not challenging, you're not dealing with documentation and numbers and files. You're just responding to emails. If you can't do that, well, what does all the other stuff behind it look like?

Abdullah Mansour: Oh of course. Yeah. Well, what's your strategy for dealing with those, uh, with these clients or how do you manage them.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, I mean, and this kind of comes back to a lot of stuff that we, you know, discuss in [00:14:30] prior episodes. But and I have mentioned this also kind of at the early part of this episode too, that I think a lot of it does come back to the auditor because you cannot change somebody else. Right? But what you can do is change your own behavior behavior. If you if you say, you know, when people always come to me and they're like, oh, well, this person should be this way or this situation should be this way. I'm like, yeah, maybe it should, but but it's not.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, yeah. So in a perfect world.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, exactly. So what are we going [00:15:00] to do about it? Right. It comes back to like, books like Extreme Ownership and concepts like that, where it's when you believe that you're the person that's the core of this, and you do have the ability to change how you act in your in your world, then you can kind of pull other people into those those better systems and way of working with you. I hate dealing with some people where like on my team, they'll say, well, there's nothing we could do about this client. [00:15:30] They're just inherently bad. You know, this is just going to be a horrible audit. There's nothing we could do. I'm like.

Abdullah Mansour: There's.

Sam Mansour: Abs. There's absolutely nothing that we could do. Like, not one thing. And generally I can find plenty of things that we could do on our side as the auditor to make it better, but we have to first, I think from a mindset perspective, can accept that we can make changes on our end that will have a positive impact on that relationship. So number one is [00:16:00] be proactive. Like if you are a reactive auditor where you you check in with people after something is due instead of kind of prompting them beforehand. Like we were talking this morning, me and you, about having the assistant send out a reminder for someone before before the meeting. Right. Like ideally we're sending the client a reminder saying, hey, you have a meeting with Abdullah in two hours from now. Please confirm you're going to attend. That's proactive. Reactive [00:16:30] is waiting for them to show up to the meeting. They don't show up. And then you're like, well, I just wasted my time. Which is exactly the conversation we were having today.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, yeah. Which is tough. So yeah, being proactive makes it a lot easier. Makes everyone's life a lot easier. The client, mine, yours. That totally makes sense.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, yeah. And the more proactive you are, and the more in advance that proactivity is so like, let's say instead of two hours before the meeting, you do it 24 hours before the meeting. What it also does is when you send a confirmation, hey, you're going to show up to this right back [00:17:00] to our conversation this morning. Then if the client confirms, how can they not show up? Like they maybe they'll flake out. But but it increases their level of commitment to showing up. Or they will tell you 24 hours in advance so that you can go do something else. Okay, now imagine that was just one conversation we had this morning about a set of meetings. Imagine if you have thousands of documents needed from different clients [00:17:30] across multiple audits. And instead of re, instead of proactively reminding and coaching and mentoring and working with the client that reminds them PPP deadlines, tracking what they provided to you, having them upload things in batches proactively. You wait until they miss the deadline, and then you send them a response Like you're gonna be doing that to everybody. Right? Yeah. I find that a lot of auditors are reactive. They are not proactive. Okay.

Abdullah Mansour: Okay, that makes [00:18:00] sense. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: The next thing is you need to set crystal clear expectations. So if the expectations are vague, I find that the difficult clients come back to you and they kind of argue. It wasn't clear to them. They didn't get your email. They didn't get the reminder they weren't on the calendar invite. Um, so what I like to do in my proactive communication is I like to get confirmation that they heard what I said. So it's like, uh, you know, like when you're in a, you've seen like those TV [00:18:30] cooking shows when they say, you know, one burger, three fries and a milkshake and then and then Gordon Ramsay's like, I didn't hear you. And they're like, they're like, yeah chef. Like they confirmed they received the order right.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah that makes sense.

Sam Mansour: Yeah I want to hear back that you got my order. So if I tell the client, hey, I sent you the PBC list, let's say email, then the PBC list, and you have the deadlines in there and you don't hear from them. It's just silence. I will email them a couple of days later and say, hey, essentially the PBC list. Do you have any questions about it? [00:19:00] If I don't hear back from them, I'll call them up and say, hey, essentially PBC list, I asked you a question. I'll be nicer than that. I didn't hear back from you. Oh, yeah. I got to respond to you. Yes, I got it. It looks great. Don't worry, we're on it. Now, I heard that. Yes, chef. I got the I got the confirmation. Okay, so now they can't say in the future. Oh, where is that PBC list? You emailed me, but I can't find it. It avoids that kind of problem.

Abdullah Mansour: Is there a benefit to keeping things simple? Do you think? I know one of the. I [00:19:30] think it might have been the ten x rule where he said, keep things simple, because then that reduces any, any confusion in the communication. It's it's that helps communication be crystal clear simple. And there's no there's no excuse for someone not to understand it if it's super simple versus a very convoluted email that's long and confusing.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, um, I find that like, for example, in the situation of an email with multiple questions in it, [00:20:00] the client generally is not going to answer 50 questions in one email, right? They're going to email something. They're going to answer some of them and not answer some of them. So I to your point, yes, I like to keep it crystal clear by sending them an email that's very direct, very to the point. It's not fluffy and massive. It's just I need this and I need this by this date. That's it. Having it any more complicated than that is confusing. What I also could [00:20:30] do if I happen to have like 50 questions to them, they'll say, hey, I have a big list of questions. I need every single question answered. Do you want me to give it to you in batches? Do you want to get on a call and answer those questions? Do you want me to send it to you in one big email? What do you want me to do? And then they can pick. Right. But then they. But then if I send it to them and they pick the one big email which I just send it to me on one email, I will then emphasize that I need every single question that [00:21:00] I have on there. I need you to take it and respond back in a different color to every single question if you're going to do that right. So it's either crystal clear in the communication with them in terms of like a short to the point email that's really clear, or it's communicating with them that maybe the email itself or whatever it might be, might not be very clean and simple, but they wanted that. And I expect I clearly communicate with them in a simple way, that I clearly expect a [00:21:30] simple response.

Abdullah Mansour: Right then. It's kind of on them to figure out how to how to respond to that larger email versus a simplified quick email. That's what makes sense that.

Sam Mansour: I would also overcommunicate, I think another area where auditors kind of, um, struggle is, uh, they don't over communicate. They, they significantly under communicate. So they tell the client, hey, I'm assigned to speak list. Go ahead. Let me know if you have any questions then. Just [00:22:00] like that's just like radio silence. Uh, a few weeks before field work. Hey, we're coming out there. We're all good to go. And the client's like, oh, yeah, okay, sure. Come on out. Then. It's like, well, we're just showing up on, you know, on Monday we show up and we're like, well, where's half the stuff that we need? That's a lot of like light communication over communicating would be as we've discussed in prior episodes, it's you're just constantly checking in communicating. Did you hear what I said? Did you get it. Do you you know, then that way [00:22:30] you're kind of coaching them and mentoring them and walking them through what you need from them? Um, I don't or I haven't met an auditor. I have not met an auditor yet. That's over communicated. And the challenge I've always made to the team is overcommunicate and if the client complains about it, I'll take responsibility for it. And I've yet to have someone come to me and say the client complained about that and that.

Abdullah Mansour: That's interesting, because going back to the the ten x rule that you mentioned, how to take control of the situation, [00:23:00] that's definitely a way to kind of put it on yourself and figure it out, right. If you overcommunicate and you take full responsibility for that getting done versus being like, oh, I sent an email to them a month ago, they didn't respond to their problem. So that kind of goes along those lines too, which I think is very helpful.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. And it comes to, you know, the communication part, I would say, you know, recap calls. Um, so I like when I do a call, I might record the call and take, you know, how to have it, take notes [00:23:30] and then put it into some, you know, some kind of AI ChatGPT or whatever. Have it create some notes, send it to the client, even kind of pre AI I would still do that to tell the client, look, we agreed to these things on the call. I'm putting it in writing and I'm sending it to you. That way they can't say I didn't agree to that on the call. I didn't hear about that because now they have an opportunity to, um, you know, say no, no, no, that whatever you put in the email, we didn't agree to that. Like, hey, we agree to this deadline. We agree to these documentation. Um, because if you just have a call with them and [00:24:00] you're communicating, they might say, yeah, yeah, we'll get all that stuff that you need and they miss the deadline and they say, well, we didn't actually agree to that. And then we have no record of it because they just told me over the phone, I like to put it in writing, um, confirm the engagements in writing and maintain documentation of everything that you do, uh, around that, over communication. So like, for example, when we're talking about the strategic PBC list, I like to note on there that, okay, I sent the initial [00:24:30] email, initial email on this date. I sent a follow up email on this date. So then if someone comes and says, well, the client's not ready, why didn't you kind of help get them ready or coach them through as the auditor? Be proactive. I'm like, but I did. And like, well, how many times did you email them? I emailed them like five times. I'm like, so I don't have. No, this is so vague, right?

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: Uh, to the maybe the partner or the manager. But if you said look at my log, I emailed them here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And then usually the auditor uh, the, you know, the partner is [00:25:00] like, okay, you know, you're super on top of this. Like, it's not you, it's going to be them. And then we just move on. Um, and then I would mention this also in another episode, but keep your tone professional but firm. Um, and then if needed, escalate internally and involve leadership. So when you're dealing with these difficult clients, um, I found that some of them can be more responsive to more of a, like an authoritarian, um, style [00:25:30] of communication. Right? Instead of a I'm your best friend and life is going to be okay. And, you know, you kind of like you, you react in a almost like a subservient way to their like, but sometimes the difficult clients can kind of be more assertive in terms of like their dominance in the situation. Like they're trying to take control of you. Oh, you work for them. And if you don't do a good job, they're going to call the audit partner and you're in trouble or, you know, whatever it is, you [00:26:00] know.

Sam Mansour: Um, because things go wrong during the audit. Like they might upload some documentation. We miss it. We contact them, ask for it again. They get upset because we asked for it again, which is common. Um, so then they, you know, they say, well, kind of like I'm going to tell on you unless you do what I say. But if you just have this, like, look, I'm here to do a job and we need these, these files from you, and it's just part of our policy. If we don't get them by this date, we need to go to the audit partner, for example. And we need to involve them in this situation. [00:26:30] So that way you're not tattling on them. But but they just know that it's part of your escalation policy. Because if they don't get certain information by a certain date, it can affect field work. It can affect when the audit goes into review, which can affect if you have a partner reviewing the engagement, it can affect their timeline too, because they're expecting this engagement and you're not turning it in. Well, they need to be in the loop on why that's not happening. Well that's because.

Abdullah Mansour: Oh, sure. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: The client's missing some deadlines. So instead of you, you know, the audit partner's like, well, it should have [00:27:00] been on my desk last week. Where is it? And you say, oh, yeah, I didn't get these five things from the client. I'm like, well, why am I hearing about this now? Like, you should have brought.

Abdullah Mansour: Me.

Sam Mansour: In a month ago. Right?

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, yeah.

Sam Mansour: Overcommunicate overcommunicate even internally with your own team and have an escalation policy, if especially if it's starting to kind of compromise the audit deadline.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, well, it sounds like clients can be, uh, a very frustrating situation in some cases. And, yeah, it can [00:27:30] be very frustrating. How do you maintain professionalism under under pressure? It sounds like a difficult client can drive a lot of put a lot of pressure on an auditor.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. Yeah I mean, they can, um. And again, it could be that they're emotionally reacting to it. It could just be that they're a difficult human being to deal with. But I think you have to kind of be the person that you are, the professional that you are. And you should try not to change that too much from scenario to scenario. So as [00:28:00] an auditor, if you're going between clients, just stick to who you are, which should be a professional, well balanced, very good at communicating person, and don't let the stresses of that audit spill into your barbecue that you're having on a Saturday with your family, you know? Yeah, it's just a job. Uh, so I would say factual, like in all of your communications, um, I've dealt with, you know, younger auditors that I'm like, well, how did how did you know that information [00:28:30] that you received? How did you verify that? Is that a fact or is that your opinion? Right. Uh, a lot of people tend to kind of put their opinions into things, or they'll bring you a fact and put their opinion on it. I'm like, I don't want that. I just want.

Abdullah Mansour: Oh, interesting.

Sam Mansour: Right. So so if you're going to if you have someone on your team and you're going out to the to the client and you're collecting information, don't give me your opinion. Just just tell me what you see. Right. And so when you communicate with a client, if you're seeing a problem in a walkthrough and some and some internal controls and [00:29:00] processes, uh, documentation don't like, I don't need your opinion. I just need you to tell me exactly what you're seeing. And then generally, the client's like, oh, yeah, I'm seeing the same issue. And then logically, we're coming to a conclusion that maybe there is a finding maybe, maybe there is potentially some fraud, maybe someone is lazy and they're not doing their job properly. But don't come to those conclusions. Just just stick to the facts. There's no signatures showing an approval on the batch of these POS. [00:29:30] This is what we're seeing, right? Um, focus on.

Abdullah Mansour: Back it.

Sam Mansour: Up with.

Abdullah Mansour: You cannot back it up with data. Almost. Is that.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. Just present the.

Abdullah Mansour: Data.

Sam Mansour: Here. It's not here. It's right, it's wrong. That's it. Like you don't need to coat it with too much other information. Stay factual. Focus on what's required and what the standards say. Uh, some of the more educated clients will say, okay. Yeah, I get that. This is not like, right. Maybe it doesn't look right, but [00:30:00] but are we out of compliance? Is there a standard that we're violating? You don't want to say no. Like because because then they're like, well, how are you coming up with this then? Like, what am I I'm wrong against your opinion as an auditor.

Abdullah Mansour: Like, yeah, no. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: They're not gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna that's gonna be a big problem. No. You have to be able to say, look, this is what we're seeing and this is the standard that it violates. Um, or or here's a breakdown of internal controls. This is the proper control procedures [00:30:30] textbook. This is how they should be. This is where you are. There's a big gap. You're at risk because of the breakdown of internal controls. That's it. Like, I think auditors, they tend to we don't want auditors to be super robotic, but we also don't need them to be like super human, you know either. Yeah, it just needs to be. We're out there to look at, to look at information, to look at what the client has to compare it against the standards and then give an objective opinion, support that opinion with the documentation [00:31:00] that we have. Be very factual about it and collect, you know, the appropriate level of evidence to support the position that we're taking. Another thing is don't take things personally. Um, some people like get really wrapped up in the client, their frustration, the emotions involved with that. You know, you're just there to do a job. You're there to do the audit. Um, you're asking them, you know, is this sample there or not? Can you find it or not? If they can't find it and the client's getting frustrated, [00:31:30] I mean, like, don't take it personally. You know, they might be they might be lashing out a little bit. They might be expressing some emotion, but you're just the person asking the question. It's like when you're at an airport and someone's yelling at the person that's, you know, the the agent at the gate, it's like, what are they going to do, you know?

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, yeah.

Sam Mansour: Um, you're just that person. You're just the agent of the gate. You're just asking for information. You're verifying they have what they need so they can get on the plane. You're verifying that they have what they need to be able to pass the audit successfully. You're just asking the questions. [00:32:00] If it was there to begin with, it wouldn't be a problem. If they were organized to begin with. It wouldn't be a problem. If you were organized to begin with, it wouldn't be a problem. So just don't just do a good job with the audit. Ask your questions, do your job properly and go home. Don't take it with you. You know, I think most resistance that we get from the from the clients is based on stress and the stress of the audit, the stress of the situation, not because they have a personal problem with you. I mean, as the auditor there, as the auditor, they might not be [00:32:30] happy that you're there to begin with, but you're not saying you're going to be their best friend, but they don't know anything about you personally.

Abdullah Mansour: There's not a personal thing. Yeah. It's just they're frustrated that they have to go through the audit. Maybe. Is that is that kind of more what you're saying?

Sam Mansour: Yeah. I mean, it's, um, it's a difficult situation for everybody. Let's just say that the auditor is not not always the good guy. Um, but but what do you do? You know, I mean, it's like police officers have a job to do. Doctors who tell patients they have cancer, they [00:33:00] have a job to do. Um, you know, agents at a at a at a at a gate have the bad news to tell people they miss their flight. I mean, and people get angry. People get sad, people get cry. You know, I've seen a lot of that stuff, but. But what do you do about it? You can't you can't take it to that again, that jokingly. But that barbecue on Saturday with your family, like it's just you can't bring it with you because I think if you find that you're bringing it with you home like that, you're it's probably affecting you enough that it might actually compromise what you're doing [00:33:30] in the audit.

Abdullah Mansour: Oh yeah. And I can imagine. Yeah.

Sam Mansour: And I try to use empathy when appropriate. Um. You know, but don't compromise on the audit quality to the point that like, it's, it's affecting your your ability to do to do your job. Um, empathy is, you know, I think if you, uh, look it up, I don't if you want to Google it real quick, there's a difference between empathy and sympathy. Um, I if you Google it real quick, um, you [00:34:00] want to be empathetic, not sympathetic, and you don't want the empathy to get to a point where you know, you're like you're their best friend and you're like cutting them a break on something that you shouldn't be cutting them a break on. But there is a benefit to empathy. So like, what's it coming up with the difference between empathy and sympathy?

Abdullah Mansour: Empathy is about understanding and sharing feelings of another person, whereas sympathy involves feeling sorry for someone else's misfortune.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, [00:34:30] and I mean, the way I had kind of heard of it before was Empathy. You know, you're just saying, hey, look, I, I get this is tough. I get this is. Yeah. Um, this is not a good situation, and I, I feel for you, but the reality is, you know, it is what it is. Sympathy. It's like they're crying. You're crying with them, you know?

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: It's kind of the my take on them.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, yeah. And I think that can sometimes [00:35:00] bring emotion into the situation that can have a negative impact on your ability to do your job. Um, so I would be clear on kind of what, you know, that was a light definition of it. But, um, that, that was kind of my understanding is, yeah, you want to be empathetic, not sympathetic. Um, and empathy has to kind of have and don't cross the line. Yeah.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah. Well, what if a client consistently creates risk for the firm?

Sam Mansour: Yeah. I mean, and I can't remember the exact standards, but, [00:35:30] um, there are professional standards related to reevaluating whether or not this is a client that we want to be involved with. I mean, sometimes it gets to a point where they create so much of a, a roadblock for us that maybe we as an audit firm, because we have a choice, we can choose to work with them or not. We bid on the job. We get accepted. Send them engagement letter. They sign it. Um, but but [00:36:00] maybe we discover early on in the in the process or maybe even further along that this is not a good situation for us, because the resistance level is so astronomically high that we can't actually do our job. Um, we feel like that during the the series of questioning that they are very uncooperative. They're disrespectful. They create excessive reworking of our of the work that we do. Um, maybe they're just sending [00:36:30] us around in circles. Um, they're, you know, they're they're tossing us around from this person to that person. I mean, they're just making it difficult, right? Let's say the.

Abdullah Mansour: Board.

Sam Mansour: Brings us in to do the audit, and the CFO is going to make our life a living hell. You know, that shouldn't be how this goes. And because there may or may not be fraud there, but there are risks of fraud if you're put into the situation where you're being juggled around. I mean, it's accounting records. It's an accounting system. Like [00:37:00] it should be pretty straightforward. So if if you're getting a high enough level of discomfort with the situation because they are overly difficult to deal with, you know, it's probably time to if you're not the decision maker on accepting or rejecting an engagement, it's probably time to go to the person that is that decision maker in the firm and say, I don't know what I mean. Present them with the facts, right? [00:37:30] Talk about emotion, or try to remove emotion out of it and say based on these facts, I don't know. You know, don't come to the conclusion for the firm, but bring the facts to the that decision maker. And you know, because because I think sometimes younger team members will will be all giddy about it. They'll take it to a decision maker. And we need to fire this client.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah.

Sam Mansour: And you have have a conversation with the partner. And the partner is like, I'm [00:38:00] maybe you have a bad feeling about this, but it's not backed up by anything other than you just don't like the client. Yeah, right. So. So if it's an overly difficult client and you think that maybe this engagement is what needs to happen, um, you need to kind of have enough evidence because it's really difficult, I think, for a firm to decide to disengage from a client. It's a big decision, and it could impact the firm's reputation.

Abdullah Mansour: Tough.

Sam Mansour: Yeah, [00:38:30] but keeping the client could also have some also some some bad, And effects as well. Like let's say for example, the client is just so astronomically difficult to deal with that, you know, you have a really bad feeling about how, you know, maybe there's some fraud, but they're not willing to give you access to everything. But for whatever reason, you just issue the report and you say everything looks fine. What happens if it turns out later that there is fraud or something wrong? I mean, oh my gosh, like that could.

Abdullah Mansour: Be.

Sam Mansour: Really [00:39:00] bad.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, yeah.

Sam Mansour: So, you know, the best auditors should be working with the best clients. Um, I think there's plenty of work out there. Um, you shouldn't have to compromise on your values just to get the client.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the 80 over 20 rule of you should, I think, focus 80% of your time as a manager, for example, on 20% of your, uh, your employees, your the best, [00:39:30] uh, 20% of your employees. That's kind of a similar. Yeah method maybe of managing that. Well how do you exit that kind of a client relationship while keeping professional?

Sam Mansour: I mean, it's always difficult. But again, I think number one is bring it to the to the decision maker. Like I think a non decision maker in the firm shouldn't make the call for the firm and start to kind of like talk to the client about well it's probably not going to work out.

Abdullah Mansour: I mean.

Sam Mansour: That's.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah that wouldn't [00:40:00] go over well.

Sam Mansour: Very unprofessional. Um, so take it to the right decision maker in the firm. And maybe if you're an in charge on an audit and there's a manager above you, you take it to them. But knowing that they probably have to take it to the partner, they might not necessarily be the decision maker, um, with the client themselves. Be respectful. I mean, this doesn't need to be like a big freak out session. You know, it's just. Yeah, you know, be respectful of them. Um, provide advanced notice and suggest [00:40:30] and suggest a transition plan. So don't don't surprise them. And you know, a minute before it's due, I'd be like, I can't do it. You know, try to be very proactive about that. So just try to look for the warning signs as soon as possible. Try to go talk to the the decision maker in your firm as soon as possible. And let the client know as soon as possible and then frame the separation as a misalignment, not a judgment. Like don't don't judge them. No one likes to be judged, but just you are not aligning with them the way your firm operates, your style [00:41:00] is just not syncing up with them. And maybe there's an audit firm out there. You don't say this part, but like maybe there's an audit firm out there that will get a lot better. It's just not how you guys operate.

Abdullah Mansour: Kind of align. Well, yeah.

Sam Mansour: Yeah. And then I mean, focus your energy on clients that align with your firm's values and expectations. So every firm is different. We do follow auditing standards but everybody's a little bit different. So not all clients are going to match up with us. Um you could try to do your best to vet them in the initial processes, you know, before you accept the engagement, [00:41:30] um, as best as possible. But you're not always going to know that. You're not always going to know. Personalities and difficult clients. Although maybe you can kind of get a sense from that, from the community, from prior auditors, from reputations and things like that. Because sometimes, you know, and sometimes, depending on what field you're in as an auditor, people, clients gain reputations. Um, you might think, oh, I'll take them on and I'll do a great job. But, you know, you're walking into a difficult, um, scenario. Uh, so just be respectful, you know, uh, bring it to the right level of management as soon as possible [00:42:00] internally, but then make the decision on the call, and then, uh, if you're in that position, just be respectful of them. And it's not easy. And it doesn't happen frequently, but sometimes it has to happen.

Abdullah Mansour: Yeah. Well, a solid advice, Sam. Thank you for another great episode. And to everyone listening, in our next episode, we'll wrap up the series by showing you how to turn lessons from these audits into firm wide improvements. See you there.