There’s an idea in the science-fiction community called steam-engine time, which is what people call it when suddenly twenty or thirty different writers produce stories about the same idea. It’s called steam-engine time because nobody knows why the steam engine happened when it did. Ptolemy demonstrated the mechanics of the steam engine, and there was nothing technically stopping the Romans from building big steam engines. They had little toy steam engines, and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors. It just never occurred to them to do it.
Audit time is like steam engine time, except more boring to watch from the outside, and more interesting from the inside. Especially when you get what the late Neptunus Lex referred to as “short but exciting” conversations.
Getting around to the point, though, two smart people have written smart things about audits and auditing.
LawDog:
While most people think of “audit” in the financial sense, there are actually about nine different kinds of audit — at least — most of which don’t need the services of an accountant.
Larry Correia:
You do NOT need to be an accountant to be an auditor. Anybody who says this is a total dumb ass with zero grasp of how any of this shit works in real life. The people who make up your audit team are recruited from whatever skill sets are necessary to audit that particular system. I (the accountant) have been on audit teams with IT guys, programmers, lawyers, and even machinists. (why machinists, because I was auditing a factory, and I could count the parts, but I couldn’t tell you if the parts were bullshit or not)
I commend both of these gentlemen to your attention, while I work on pulling together some other things and try to stay warm.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 19th, 2025 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Clippings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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