Audit paradox: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
no edit summary
No edit summary
No edit summary
(3 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{a|tech|}}{{Buchstein}}’s audit [[:Category:Paradox|paradox]] observes that, should you use workflow tools, [[legaltech]] and automation to carry out rudimentary tasks they will, by their nature, force you into sub-optimal behaviour patterns. In other words a tool that is meant to ''save'' work and ''reduce'' anxiety actually creates ''more'' of it.
{{a|tech|
[[File:Ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal.png|450px|frameless|center]]
}}{{Buchstein}}’s audit [[:Category:Paradox|paradox]] observes that, should you use workflow tools, [[legaltech]] and automation to carry out rudimentary tasks they will, by their nature, force you into sub-optimal behaviour patterns. In other words a tool that is meant to ''save'' work and ''reduce'' anxiety actually creates ''more'' of it.
 
Congratulations: you have implemented a new technology solution to help you regularise your review and completion of [[confidentiality agreement]]<nowiki/>s. It has been calculated, costed, banked and factored into next year’s legal budget that this tool will<ref>It absolutely won’t — you know that, I know that, everyone except the COO knows that — but this is not the point of the story here so bear with us.</ref> save the equivalent of 1.5 head counts over the forthcoming year, a “win” that has earned the legal operations team an [[industry award]] from ''Steer! Monthly'', the official periodical of [[Steerco|Worshipful Guild of Steering Committee Members]]. Elsewhere, unobserved, the firm’s dark universe of infrastructural bureaucracy has silently whirred into action. Approval subroutines have fired and launched escalations for the spend on the software vendor; a militarised third party information security analytics surveillance drone has departed form the loading bay; and a platoon of internal audit marines has fetched up on the legal department foreshore armed with quarterly certifications of compliance with money-laundering regulations and documentation, governing law, and process agency policies.


The [[audit paradox]] is at the confluence of three streams of modern institutional thinking:
The [[audit paradox]] is at the confluence of three streams of modern institutional thinking:
*'''The [[buttocractic oath]]''': One’s first priority is to one’s own posterior. ''[[Primum nil errare]]'': First, do no harm ''to your own career''.
*'''The [[buttocractic oath]]''': One’s first priority is to one’s own posterior. ''[[Primum nil errare]]'': First, do no harm ''to your own career''.
*'''[[Casanova’s advice]]''': [[If in doubt, stick it in]]: it won’t do any harm to ''ask'' for contractual protections we don’t in point of fact, really need.
*'''[[Casanova’s advice]]''': [[If in doubt, stick it in]]: it won’t do any harm to ''ask'' for contractual protections we don’t in point of fact, really need.
*'''The world consists of what can be measured''': The ultra-[[reductionist]] view that as long as you can measure something you can control it.
*'''The world consists of what can be measured''': The ultra-[[reductionist]] view that as long as you can measure something you can control it, which bleeds into the converse, and entirely false, assumption, that ''if you can’t see it, it can’t be there''.


Therefore an [[audit officer]] reminds us of the {{hhgg}}’s Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal: a “mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a brush, but very very ravenous”.
{{sa}}
*[[Audit paradox]]
*[[Substance and form]]
*[[Computer-based training]]
{{Ref}}
{{c|Paradox}}
{{c|Paradox}}

Navigation menu