Christian Ekeigwe
Visionary,
Audit is Trustworthy!
"Speak Out on Behalf of One of The Most Underappreciated Groups … Accountants"
Why Auditors Must Think Like Cybercriminals
Informed by Truth
The markets and society yearn for perfect audit for their comfort. In that quest they hastily misapprehend most corporate failures as audit failures. As a result, the sanctity of audit has been unfairly besmirched by dysfunctional asymmetric judgment of responsibility for corporate scandals that are mischaracterized as audit failures. To be sure, the notion that audit is trustworthy is not a decided audit failure denialism because we know that, for indeterminate reasons, even good accountants do bad audits, sometimes. But as the facts emerge from investigations showing the insidious causes of the scandals, a restoral is needed to reverse the incorrect belief that audit is untrustworthy. It is apt for audit to be acclaimed and requited for its efficacious utility that produces the ballast of trust on which civilization thrives. It will be invidious to ignore this profound role of audit.
Hence, accounting needs confident advocacy to halt this subreption that detracts from the sublime trustworthiness of audit. Abstract audit, abstract accounting, cannot do it. It needs our confident, emergent voices to avow in unison the truth that
AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!
Audit Role Exceptionalism is Real
Audit role exceptionalism is rooted in fact: the invisible hands of the market inhered audit at the fundament of civilization as a necessary utility to produce the trust that concerts diverse relationships to build prosperity with conative force. This utility of audit is irreplaceable. With evident demonstration, and undaunted by occasional contretemps of transient aberrations, audit, stoical by nature, continues to uniquely stand firm as the “leading bearer of legitimacy … because other sources of legitimacy such as community and state, are declining in influence” (Power, 1997).
In concatenation of reasoning, therefore, audit role exceptionalism is not notional, it is not aspirational, it is real.
AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!
the maximand for the future of audit
Talent Holds the Key to The Future
According to the philosopher Jane Jacobs (2004),
"a vigorous culture capable of making corrective, stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding."
Gilder (1984) weighs in with the wisdom that:
“the crucial capital of industry is not money or machinery, but mind and spirit …”
McCloskey (2018) confirmed that “ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world.”
Hence, for the future of audit, talent is the maximand. That is why Audit is Trustworthy Worldwide Advocacy will help the profession in attracting future talents and find opportunities for them to get the best training necessary for professionals who are worthy of the market's confidence that they will exert steadying influence on society through the consummate practice of auditing.
Our goal is to stimulate and amplify individual confident voices of responsible advocacy for accounting and auditing.
We aim “to speak out on behalf of one of the most underappreciated groups” in the world – accountants and auditors – to make their value in society more visible.
We believe that there is need for advocacy for accounting and auditing to reclaim the trustworthy legacy of the profession and instill in the belief systems of society that audit is perdurably trustworthy, in spite of its imperfection.
As society civilized with counting and numbers many problems developed that challenged and weakened accountability. Accounting developed in response to deal with the inherent errabilities of counting and presentation with numbers by bringing clarity and certainty to relationships that are expressed in numbers. By so doing it built the trust substrate on which modern civilization thrives. This profound role is not disregardable. It affirms that Audit is Trustworthy.
Storied Role of Audit
This is an unassailable inspiring concretion of the belief in audit exceptionalism, affirming that
AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!
The Storied Role of Accounting in Civilization
Therefore, AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!
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Embracing Audit's Imperfections
Obligatory Loss Is In The Nature of the Universe
Obligatory loss or normal loss is the inevitable loss that is associated with an activity. It will occur irrespective of the excellent best practice in the operation - the only way to avoid it is by stopping the related activity. The motion of the earth provokes earthquakes as obligatory loss. Scientists tell us that "the global process behind great earthquakes is quite advantageous for life on earth -- especially human life” (Broad, 2005), and that "they are also essential to human existence" (Jacoby, 2023). It will happen as long as the earth spins and with human activities upsetting its balance - the quake helps to restore the balance. In manufacturing we have normal loss of inputs - it is impossible to find a production process that yields 100% of input materials.
In the human body our metabolism, very essential for life, necessarily causes loss in its processes. So too, in the high metabolic cauldron of the markets every activity is performed with inevitable losses. The role of control and audit is to minimize, not eradicate, the losses but to keep them at a level that we judge as normal.
Much of what we call audit failure is part of the obligatory loss in the crucible of capitalism. Such residual audit failures cannot ever be eliminated by any best practice. Hence, there is no cure for audit failures, just like there is no cure for medication errors. But there is a problem when losses are provoked by predatory deviogenic motives.
A confident society should embrace audit with all its imperfections.
There is no perfect audit - it is only aspirational. Audit failure is edifying, reparative and transformative. Therefore,
AUDIT IS TRUSTWORTHY!
what we want to do
Galvanize Accountants for Worldwide Advocacy
Audit is Trustworthy is a worldwide initiative to directly refute the notion that audit is untrustworthy. The advocacy will mount responsible counterspeech to defend the profession.
Regular interviews with industry leaders will bring diverse perspectives to issues affecting our industry.
Protecting the public interest is the essence of the social compact of audit with society, a hallowed role that is inhered in the foundation of civilization. Therefore, it behooves audit to honor the public trust and to sedulously pursue and protect the related public interest.
The public needs to be disabused of the wrong notion that audit is untrustworthy and be instilled with impressive imagery of the heroic role of accounting in the ascent of our civilization. This calls for enlightenment programs that showcase the dependence of the markets on the affordances of audit and how now our complex society’s needs have combined to make it obligatory.
Inform the belief system of auditors to be strong and courageous to espouse and assert the sanctity of audit and its trustworthiness.
