Editorial

Citation

Evans, S. (2014), "Editorial", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 27 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2014-1802

Editorial

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 27, Issue 8.

The unexamined life

I have been mulling over the role that is afforded auditors as reviewers and commentators, and often as judges on the wisdom of actions that others take. It reminded me of other circumstances where that process has been exercised, but with a twist.

I’ll begin with one that some of you will know well. If you have been teaching, your students have likely subjected you to anonymous evaluations, though by invitation. Whether it is using a Likert scale or something of a more qualitative nature, you may have pondered the value of a feedback system that is voluntary and affected by the opinions of students at the extremes – that is, the lovers or haters. On a personal basis, you make the best of them that you can, sieving the comments for information that will help you to do better. Maybe there is a hint of praise to be discovered, glinting like gold among the gravel.

Even if your institution acknowledges the deficiencies of such methods, they often rely on them to consider your suitability for promotion, for example. The results may crop up in annual performance review meetings with your boss too.

Sometimes, I ask students to say how the topic I am teaching could have been more rewarding for them. They seem refreshingly honest in answering despite the lack of anonymity: “There should have been more focus on X” or “I loved Y and would like to have done more of that than Z because when I graduate […]”, and so on.

I encounter a more direct feedback situation that is quite purposely created. In a topic concerning the world of writers and publishing, I ask students to critique a small batch of reviews of live music and books. That variety in subject matter is to ensure that they are considering readers with a range of expectations. We discuss diverse approaches to criticism and then they are challenged to apply their newfound editing skills by reducing the word count of one of the reviews by 25 per cent before we meet again.

I always find it instructive for a number of reasons. The first is the enthusiasm with which they find fault; it is apparently easy to say how the cuts should be made. The second reason is to see how little research they do before making up their minds. Apparently – and perhaps since no marks are at stake – it's enough to work with a simple combination of what they remember from the initial class discussion plus their own personal taste. Their opinions are very important, even as they question the reviewer's rights to express his or her own.

I do ask whether any of them checked online to see if the reviews were genuine and, oddly for such a media-savvy cohort, none has ever done so. This makes the third reason that I find the process instructive even more interesting. The reviews are all mine, and I don’t reveal that fact until the students have torn them to shreds. The looks on their faces are priceless then, but I don’t hide my authorship for that purpose. It is because I don’t want to influence their comments, and because the honest kind of statements they make add a welcome dose of reality to the feedback that I get from other quarters.

What they say is almost always right, at the least in a general sense. Yes, I can say that the reviews are usually written to a tight deadline and that I frequently look at them an hour after hitting that Send button suddenly full of regret when I spot an error too late. A better review could have been written: I know it, and my students know it.

So, thus far we have the institutionally driven systematized audit of performance, flawed as it might be. Then we have more intimate critiquing of one's own work by students as they closely examine their teachers’ professional topic design and output. What else?

The “else” is much more personal still. When my partner was first diagnosed as seriously ill, it raised questions about aspects of how I lived and dealt with other people. It made me think about the kind of person I had wanted to be and whether I measured up, and especially about where I thought I didn’t do so. It was a jolting reminder that we do so much assessing and guiding and giving feedback and mentoring – and that even if we don’t get it as right as we would always like, we are very lucky to be involved in the process, whether giving or receiving.

Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Amen to that.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne, and your e-mail correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Steve Evans Literary Editor