Q: During an external audit, what records are we allowed to keep confidential – e.g. human resources records? Certain records pertaining to new business leads or accounting matters? Specifically, my question is related to audits to the ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems–Requirements and ISO 13485:2003: Medical devices — Quality management systems — Requirements for regulatory purposes standards.
A: The “scope” of any audit is the quality management system (QMS) as found in the ISO standard for quality management. Areas such as finance, marketing plans, sales goals, and other business related topics are not part of a QMS audit.
It should be understood that during the audit, potential areas of conflict between the auditor and auditee might exist. The most common is when the auditor wants to see training records and the auditee claims them to be a confidential part of HR records. The auditor need to be a diplomat here and explain that only the training record is needed and not the entire HR record.
Also, it is not uncommon for the auditee to require the auditor to sign a non-disclosure agreement stating that the auditor(s) will keep everything observed during the audit confidential between the parties.
Again, the scope of the audit, usually agreed to ahead of time, is the QMS — not any business related matters.
Jim Werner
Voting member to the U.S. TAG to ISO TC 176
Medical Device Quality Compliance (MDQC), LLC.
ASQ Senior Member
ASQ CQE, CQA, RABQSA Lead QMS Assessor