Improving Emotional Intelligence
By Jessica Mae Gois
COMPETENT employees are needed in achieving the goals of every auditing firm. Competence
is an aptitude obtained from education, training and experience. Broadly, it combines skills,
knowledge and behavior.
We were taught that the qualifications of a successful auditor mainly involve having the expertise
to implement auditing and accounting standards, procedures and techniques to carry out a correct
audit and produce quality output in a timely manner. Not addressed in school, however, were issues
such as dealing with multiple clients and difficult auditees — from the disinterested to the overly
aggressive — that come on top of expectations of detailed and quality output on tight deadlines. As
auditors, we were mentally and emotionally unprepared.
In order to overcome these challenges, auditors must focus on improving their emotional intelligence
as much as their technical competence. Emotion is an important underlying factor that may interact
with other situational variables to influence audit judgments and decisions.
Emotional intelligence (also known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand, use and
manage your emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others,
overcome challenges and defuse conflict. It helps to build relationships, succeed at work, and achieve
career and personal goals. It can also help a person to connect with his/her feelings, turn intention
into action and make informed decisions about what matters the most.
The key skills for building EQ and improving the ability to manage emotions and connect with others are:
Self-management. Auditors should understand and control impulsive feelings and behaviors. They must remain
mindful of how their emotions might be affecting their surroundings. With this skill, an auditor can follow
through on commitments and adapt to changing circumstances.
Self-awareness. This allows the auditors to know their strengths, weaknesses, triggers and motivators. When
interacting with others, auditors should be aware of the subtle facial expressions evident when feeling anger,
sadness, fear and joy, and the accompanying physical sensations in places like the stomach, throat or chest.
By understanding the self, one can gain clarity to be more proactive with respect to reactions and have
self-confidence.
Social awareness. This is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others. Auditors should
learn to recognize and interpret the nonverbal cues others use to communicate. These let a person know how
others are really feeling, how their emotional state is changing from moment to moment, feel comfortable
socially and recognize the power dynamics in a group.
There is no better time than the present to improve our emotional intelligence. We auditors must remain
committed to lifelong learning beyond debits and credits through engagements with opportunities for
professional and personal development.
Jessica Mae Gois, is the audit manager of Paguio, Dumayas & Associates, CPAs (PrimeGlobal Philippines),
and an institutional member of the Association of CPAs in Public Practice (ACPAPP). The views and opinions in this
article are hers and do not represent those of PDAC and ACPAPP.
Source: Improving Emotional Intelligence - Manila Times