Public secrecy in government auditing revisited

This paper returns to the topics raised in Radcliffe (2008) ‘Public Secrecy in Auditing: What government auditors cannot know.’ It presents evidence that Funnel's critique involves misreading and factual error. Crucially, the 2008 paper focuses on the role of the Auditor of State of Ohio; Funnell criticizes the piece as conflating the role of auditor and politician, as he puts it, policy matters “are the democratic right of the elected government to determine not an unelected public servant.” This is in conflict with the institutional detail of the case: as is stated at various points in the paper, the Auditor of State of Ohio is directly elected in partisan political elections, one of the many such state auditor positions in the United States that follow this practice. The office holder during the time in question, James Petro, was a Republican politician elected Ohio's Auditor of State in 1994.This paper goes on to argue that, notwithstanding these matters, it is naïve to argue that auditors are essentially divorced from the world of politics and policy. Instead, auditors work within discursive frameworks of what is possible in ways that are more nuanced and practical. The paper reviews key elements in a stream of related work that draws on history and fieldwork to support this view. The piece closes with discussion of the academic publishing process.