Are audits implicated in major accidents?
My second audit paper reviewed thousands of major accident reports, exploring how investigators framed the role of audits prior to the accident.
Surprisingly, very few investigations mentioned the role of audits – positively, negatively or neutrally (just 44 reports out of thousands).
Check out the full paper below.
We grouped the audit findings into 4 overarching categories where audits:
a) failed to facilitate an accurate understanding of threats by misinterpreting their saliency
b) failed to facilitate timely action against threats by inadequately addressing the deterioration of known issues
c) failed to facilitate effective management of issues, leading to confusion around the purpose and scope of audits
d) failed to facilitate sufficient focus on threats by lacking focus on critical hazards and focusing on paperwork over operational issues
In other words, audits “failed silently” by missing threats while simultaneously praising performance
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Ref: Hutchinson, B., Dekker, S., & Rae, A. (2024). How audits fail according to accident investigations: A counterfactual logic analysis. Process Safety Progress, 43(3), 441-454.
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