Audit paradox

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Büchstein’s audit 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.

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.
• 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.