What 7,500 Audits Taught Me About the First Ten Minutes

After several decades and more than seven thousand audits, I will tell you a trade secret that is not really a secret: the audit starts in the parking lot, and the first ten minutes usually write the hypothesis the next two days test. Not the score. The hypothesis.

What those minutes actually measure

Not cleanliness, exactly. Coherence. Does the person who signs me in know the visitor procedure or improvise it? When I ask for the HACCP plan, does someone walk to it, or does a search party form? Does the QA manager answer the first question, or do they answer every question including the ones I asked the sanitation lead? Each of those is a tiny read on the same variable: does this program run daily, or was it assembled for me.

The tell I trust most

I ask an operator what happens when a check fails. A facility with a working program gets me an answer in one breath: stop, hold, call, tag. A facility with a paper program gets me a glance toward the supervisor. The operator is not failing in that moment; the system is, because the system never made the answer automatic.

You cannot stage it, and that is the good news

Facilities try to manage the first impression with fresh paint and a rehearsed opening meeting, and experienced auditors discount both automatically. The only way to pass the first ten minutes is to run a real program for the year before the audit, which happens to be the only way to pass the next two days too. Everything I have ever taught about audit preparation reduces to that sentence.