The Closing of the Auditors Mind?: How to Reverse the Erosion of Trust, Virtue, and Wisdom in Modern Auditing

In The Closing of the Auditors Mind?, author David J. ORegan describes internal auditing as an important binding agent of social cohesion, for the accountability of individuals and organizations and also at aggregated levels of social trust. However, ORegan also reveals that internal auditing faces two severe challenges an external challenge of adaptation and an internal challenge of fundamental reform.

The adaptation challenge arises from ongoing, paradigmatic shifts in accountability and social trust. The command- and- control, vertical hierarchies of traditional bureaucracies are being replaced in importance by networked, flattened patterns of accountability. The most challenging assurance demands of the modern era are increasingly located in three institutional domains in the inner workings of organizations; in intermediary spaces at organizational boundaries; and in extra-mural locations. Internal auditing continues to cling, barnacle- like, to the inner workings of traditional, bureaucratic structures, and it has little to offer the emerging assurance demands on or beyond institutional boundaries. The reform challenge arises from internal auditings prevailing tendency toward a rigid, algorithmic, checklist mindset that suppresses practitioners creativity and critical thinking. This trend is increasingly narrowing internal auditings intellectual and moral horizons. Under the pressures of these challenges, internal auditing is struggling to fulfil its primary purpose of serving the public interest.

ORegans powerful book focuses on:

• The redistribution of social trust from traditional, hierarchical institutions to diffuse, horizontally distributed networks
• The perennial validity of the classical virtues as the humane foundation of professional activity
• The role of creative expertise in promoting professional wisdom

The Closing of the Auditors Mind? is a philosophical audit of a profession on the threshold of crisis. The book presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy, nor indeed of auditing. Philosophical technicalities are contained in an Appendix, leaving the main text jargon-free. ORegan provides original and striking perspectives on the malaise of modern internal auditing, and he proposes radical remedies. This captivating and well-informed book is a must-read for all who are concerned with our collective socio-economic and political well-being.