It didn’t take long for me as a young internal auditor to realize how important it was that meetings with clients go well. Actually, we called them “auditees” back then. There were typically two critical meetings in our internal audit engagement process: the entrance conference and the exit conference. The entrance conference set the tone for the engagement, and it was very important that we put the clients at ease and inspire confidence and trust. The exit conference was even more important. If we didn’t deliver the right message about the results of the audit with the right tone, we would likely meet resistance and wouldn’t inspire enthusiasm on the part of the client to implement needed corrective actions.
