Audit paradox

The JC pontificates about technology An occasional series. Go Premium Technology Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

The JC’s audit paradox is the observation that, should you use workflow tools, reg tech 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.

The audit paradox is at the confluence of three streams of modern institutional thinking:

• The buttocratic 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.
• The world consists of what can be measured: The ultra-reductionist view that as long as you can measure something you can control it.

Example: The contract review tool.