Comments on: Auditing: it's over cuz it's not smart

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:45:06 +0000

@john – you're better directing your comment to Redmonk than myself. They're the ones making the assertion.

By: John P.

John P. — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:02:34 +0000

"The important thing to understand about the RedMonk model is that it decouples corporate sponsorship from agenda-setting"

Really?

Dennis, take a look at my comment at the end of Shel's post (to which you have linked).

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that their model decouples sponsorship and agenda setting. If you wish to offer evidence, feel free to post links and the rest of us shall review it and form our own opinions.

Evidence from researchers such as Dan Ariely (Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics and visiting professor at MIT’s Media Lab) suggests that we have a love affair with FREE things and we irrationally sacrifice quality in the process. Undoubtedly, this applies equally to free information.

So long as firms such as RedMonk continue to offer "free and unbiased" content to readers they shall maintain popularity in the end-user community whether or not the content is genuinely valuable or unbiased. Of course the content is subsidized by dozens of corporate sponsors. What percentage of their content is subsidized by donations from the end-user community? I suspect zero. Draw your own conclusions.

By: LYON CASTING

LYON CASTING — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:45:28 +0000

What is Auditing ?

By: LYON CASTING

LYON CASTING — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:44:40 +0000

good

By: What if? | AccMan

What if? | AccMan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:02:44 +0000

[...] I pondered on the question of how the global recession might be overcome using Umair Haque’s alternative ’smart [...]

By: Francine McKenna

Francine McKenna — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:30:41 +0000

If PwC goes ahead and buys BearingPoint, they'll accelerate their demise. Don't forget EY… Funny how KPMG seems the most sensible by comparison these days, keeping their head down and all except for their silly PR that fed their global empire desires… http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent….

By: James Governor

James Governor — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:56:17 +0000

thanks very much for the props dennis. we're working at it!

here's to the rise of post-autistic economics…. where accounting and strategy have a human face.

By: Phil Hodgen

Phil Hodgen — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:21:43 +0000

Ah, the folly of metrics in a world where a human judgment ("Is this a good outcome or a bad outcome?") is required.

Ron Baker is all over this in the timesheet arena, isn't he. Same logic probably applies in the audit arena. Ron's point — I'm a learner in this area so maybe I misunderstand it — is you don't measure project success (and employee productivity) by the hours the bill, but by the results they get, and this requires something squishy — the manager has to make a judgment call.

Audits done badly are as useless as timesheets for professionals.

I'm coming to the conclusion — following your logic — that even well-done audits are useless.

Deadpool pick for first Big 4 firm to die: PwC, 15-March-2010. Who's the bookie on this bet? Yeah I know Deloitte looks dodgy these days but I'll stick with the original bet I made to @retheauditors on Twitter.

@philiphodgen