Daily Post 1465
INDIA AUDIT FESTIVAL!
Audit has so much of a negative connotation that it is generally treated as a punitive exercise. Pre-audit preparation also takes care in detail of the facilities, food, transport and accommodation provided to the audit party. That audit is for our own benefit a long forgotten story. That we need audit would never even occur to most of us in various professional fields we are in. We are too confident of sailing over what comes our way, till the time we get drowned. That has been our history and that seems to be our future as well. The mechanical audit paras are barely happily answered, if they are. That the organisation will not get it audited in a fair manner is a given. The third party performing this noble act might not be achieving what it is mandated to.
What happened to Satyam all of us know. But for being Satyam it was everything else. COVID-19 has brought to us to unforgivable times. Every single mistake would be physically killing and delay the recovery process for how long, nobody knows. In some sectors and areas it might remain a bit too stunted or it might just not happen at all. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. We have running and using our organisations recklessly, as there would never be a raining day. Destiny had planned it otherwise, it was not a raining day, it was a deluge, which the world had never seen. If all had failed in a similar manner there was certainly some flaw which all us were afflicted with.
Nobody knew how to react as if they had never seen any crisis. All the audit and other inspection notes turned out to be of less than even the value of paper on which it was printed. Nothing of this nature had ever happened but that is what we are meant to handle. Daily issues even algorithms can handle. We could not feel of the pulse of organisation. How superficial can one be; no financial audit gave you any indication as to how long will you survive financially? The audit of the social service sector, the less said the better, the data itself was not forthcoming. The famed Plan B was nowhere to be seen. The Big Four now need to audit themselves. No audit could even project the likely fall in revenue collection in the worst case scenario.
To add positivity to the overall tenor of gloom, we as a country can have an India Audit Festival. No outside auditors required. Best auditors are ones who are to be held accountable for the loss or failure. They are ones who would provide you the most appropriate actionable points and also make it happen. Every organisation, enterprise, academic / research institution or a Govt dept needs to do an Audit; resources and finance based. Also the reasons why most of them crashed so completely. Workable projections and the modalities of garnering of resources based on the recent tragic experience needs to factored in, in every step they take. They would have somehow survived one onslaught, they would be completely decimated in the second. We cannot be waiting for doles and vaccines and preferably both.
AUDIT IS NOT A CHECK BOX AND A COMPLIANCE ISSUE.