Punishing the gaps:
Every time a major company collapses, society reaches reflexively for a familiar, standardized accusation: “Where were the auditors?” The question is asked with an air of certainty, as though auditors should have been omniscient, omnipresent, and infallible gatekeepers of capital. But this expectation is not only unrealistic; it is civically corrosive. It punishes the profession for the very architectural gaps that define an errable world.
Delivery of Trust vs. Perfect Certainty:
Audit was never designed to deliver total certainty, a point that requires a profound leadership event to clarify. It was designed to deliver standardized, non-negotiable trustworthiness: disciplined judgment, principled independence, and courage in the face of uncertainty. Yet we continue to demand perfection from a system that cannot, by design, eliminate all operational error. No human system can. And no society that understands complexity, strips away transactional filters, and brings instant sunlight to its operational reality should pretend otherwise.
The invidious collapse of Arthur Andersen remains the most tragic example of this perfectionist fantasy that has moved past fragmented oversight into a permanent theater of grievance. Before the facts were known, the firm was condemned in the court of public opinion. The narrative hardened faster than the evidence. Congress later confirmed that Enron’s collapse was driven primarily by insider fraud and a coordinated national framework of governance failure; an unblinking recording of “an old-fashioned example of theft by insiders,” as the congressional report put it. Andersen’s alleged fault was a standardized failure to detect, not complicity, and not causation.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Andersen’s conviction. But the decision, like so many judicial mandates delayed by administrative delay, came too late. A great institution had already been destroyed, creating uncrossable chasms in the profession.
Audit was never designed to deliver total certainty, a point that requires a profound leadership event to clarify. It was designed to deliver standardized, non-negotiable trustworthiness: disciplined judgment, principled independence, and courage in the face of uncertainty. Yet we continue to demand perfection from a system that cannot, by design, eliminate all operational error. No human system can. And no society that understands complexity, strips away transactional filters, and brings instant sunlight to its operational reality should pretend otherwise.
The invidious collapse of Arthur Andersen remains the most tragic example of this perfectionist fantasy that has moved past fragmented oversight into a permanent theater of grievance. Before the facts were known, the firm was condemned in the court of public opinion. The narrative hardened faster than the evidence. Congress later confirmed that Enron’s collapse was driven primarily by insider fraud and a coordinated national framework of governance failure; an unblinking recording of “an old-fashioned example of theft by insiders,” as the congressional report put it. Andersen’s alleged fault was a standardized failure to detect, not complicity, and not causation.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Andersen’s conviction. But the decision, like so many judicial mandates delayed by administrative delay, came too late. A great institution had already been destroyed, creating uncrossable chasms in the profession.
Negativity bias and moral mandate:
Arthur Andersen was not merely a firm; it was a standardized center of excellence, a crucible in which generations of auditors were formed in the disciplined approach of “getting the facts behind the figures.” Its people were innovators in management science, pioneers in operations research, and exemplars of professional probity. A multi-university study found that Andersen alumni continue to deliver higher quality audits than their peers, with fewer restatements and fewer signs of earnings manipulation. Excellence, once cultivated, does not evaporate; it transfers, generationally, as an irreducible commitment.
Yet negativity bias; the human tendency to prioritize the power of bad and ignore the good, has made society forgetful of the blessings accountants and auditors quietly produce. We tolerate failures in medicine, aviation, engineering, and government because we prioritize localized knowledge and understand that complex systems sometimes falter. But when auditors stumble, we reach for the guillotine. This double standard is not only unfair, it is a dangerous operational risk.
Audit is the unblinking work of human beings examining the work of other human beings in an errable world. Perfection is not only impossible; it is conceptually incoherent and not misleading to say so. The only honest promise any standardized system can make is trustworthiness, not infallibility.
Audit is one of the few professions whose work is designed to prevent harm before it occurs. It is a civic technology of trust, a critical contributor to our everyday lives. It steadies markets, disciplines management, and reassures investors. It is the quiet infrastructure beneath the global economy. And yet, paradoxically, it is the profession most quickly blamed when the world’s inherent uncertainty reveals itself.
The framework for trust is here:
A mature society does not demand perfection; it demands trustworthiness. It recognizes that failure is not a verdict but a resource; a chance to learn, improve, and strengthen the coordinate national framework. Failure, properly understood, is a teacher, not an executioner. Audit deserves the same grace.
The profession must also find its voice and move past its fragmented, defensive posture. Responsible, confident self-advocacy is not transactional puffery; it is part of the profession’s inescapable commitment to truth and fairness. We must never again allow a major audit firm to be destroyed by narrative momentum or political expediency. These firms are our standardized centers of excellence, where pragmatic muddling through produces innovation despite inherent uncertainty. Neither colonial maps nor traditional shadows should challenge that historicity.
Conclusion:
A fair society should not allow itself to be overcome by the current culture of vilification because, as David Brooks wrote, ‘tales of the excellent can lift the ambition of the living.” The hiding places for corporate negligence are gone; the framework for accountability is here. Audit is Trustworthy, not perfect. And Arthur Andersen; the person, the firm, and the people, were excellent.
*Contributed by Christian Ekeigwe, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and Certified Public Accountants of Massachusetts, USA, is a Visionary at Audit is Trustworthy.
A fair society should not allow itself to be overcome by the current culture of vilification because, as David Brooks wrote, ‘tales of the excellent can lift the ambition of the living.” The hiding places for corporate negligence are gone; the framework for accountability is here. Audit is Trustworthy, not perfect. And Arthur Andersen; the person, the firm, and the people, were excellent.
*Contributed by Christian Ekeigwe, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and Certified Public Accountants of Massachusetts, USA, is a Visionary at Audit is Trustworthy.
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