It all began with laser’s consistent light.  In 1969, my last school year, we were all fascinated by laser technology, to the point that we took extra school time to experiment with laser equipment.

This was the very first occasion I came across the term “consistent light” and its underlying meaning of “consistency”.

As years went by, I almost completely forgot consistency and its implications until I started my auditor’s job, then, words and concepts like consistency, ethics, sustainability, became daily speech.

I am not going to treat anyhow the words and concepts “ethics” and “sustainability.”  Too much is written and said about them.  The more we read and hear these words, the more we lose what their true and deep meaning can be.

I want instead to focus on “consistency”, because I find it is quite a touchy trait in humans.

In whatever discussion, speech, or review of writings, you can catch even a minimal trace of inconsistency, which can be understood as poor agreement or accordance, conformity with previous attitudes, behavior, practice, statements, or lack of it.  And you are drawn to  the “author”’s attention to it.  In the best case you will see him or her grow red with rage and most probably yell at you that you have not properly understood his or her meanings.

So goes the world.  Tell one that he or she is not consistent and you will find yourself blamed for having spoken the truth.

In logic, “consistent” means “constituted so that the proposition deduced from different axioms of the system do not contradict each other”.

Which means that a proposition can be based on different axioms and that the proposition can be consistent provided the constituent axioms are not contradictory.

In simpler words, consistency allows for differences, provided differences are balanced not to discrepancies.

We would say a car is “consistent” not when it runs perfectly smoothly, when it performs its functions at an acceptable level, though some of its parts do not run perfectly.

Inconsistency drives me simply crazy especially when it goes hand-in-hand with pretended, arrogant consistency.

Then, I dig deeper and deeper to indicate or show inconsistent thinking or doing, even if – by doing so – I run the risk to be judged unsympathetic.

In the world of communication, inconsistency can be a very high risk.  We’ve all heard the expression “the Emperor is naked.”

Though inconsistency cannot be hundred-percent avoided, we have to be aware of its risks.

We can – for example – allow for a certain degree of inconsistency in our communication: we have so many information to deal with that we cannot digest them all properly.

Or – if we really want, or need, to be hundred-percent consistent – we have to identify and brush away all and any cause of inconsistency especially when auditing or being audited.

Any “stupid” auditor’s question will be immediately spotted by the auditee, and any false auditee’s answer will make a bell ring in the auditor’s mind.

Both inputs will result in poor audit credibility.

One more point: for years we’ve had to write and speak an unofficial “global english.”   Though any language develops in time and place, probably no other language has  dramatically changed as the English language due to many external influences.

This very fast and substantial change can result in difficulties of expression, that can sometimes can result in “inconsistency”.

We are presently living in the age of recertification audits based on ISO 9001:2015.  Even the global CB auditors tread on eggshells and do not dig too deep into the auditee’s quality management system but keep recommending attendance to their training courses, instead.

Isn’t this an “inconsistency”?

Hopefully, the future will see – in the standards’ world, at least – dying redundancy giving birth to more consistency.

We have to keep moving, today, in a standards’ maze that speaks to the standardization system(s) inconsistency.

If standards pretend the industrial world is consistent, then the standards have to be consistent, in the first place.