Best practice: ‘a pernicious addition to the lexicon’
by Claire Bodanis, founder of Falcon Windsor and author of Trust me, I’m listed.
First published on the Falcon Windsor blog in March 2020
‘Assess, assure and inform: improving audit quality and effectiveness’, is hardly the snappiest of titles. But my academic training kicked in and I knew that it was my duty to readers and publisher alike to read this recent government-commissioned review into the quality and effectiveness of audit, given its relevance to reporting. After all, I mustn’t miss anything important in my book, Trust me, I’m listed. I thought it best not to make it bedtime reading though, just in case I never made it past page 1.
But, just as they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, so I have learnt that you shouldn’t judge a government-commissioned review by its title. Aside from the very interesting recommendations it makes about how the audit profession could (and should) be improved, the way it was written was, to this writer, quite astonishing. The first two words of the review had me metaphorically catapulted out of bed in surprise – and joy, I have to say. For the estimable author, Sir Donald Brydon, hadn’t started with some long, boring, unwieldy sentence, caveating everything under the sun. No – he started with a two-word sentence. A two-word sentence! Imagine my excitement! And even more, that these words were those most likely to kindle fire in the heart of any writer. Sir Donald opens his review with this: “Language matters.”
I flipped to the back to see who’d contributed to this mighty work, and found instead ‘Appendix 9 – A poem on auditing’. A poem? A poem? What genius, to end the review with a POEM! (And a very amusing one at that, which sums up neatly why the review was necessary in the first place.)
I could barely contain myself. I scanned the contents list eagerly for subjects related to my reporting book, and my eye alighted upon ‘The Regulator (ARGA)’ – because of course this is the body that is soon to replace the FRC. And underneath it, the first subsection – ‘Celebrate the good, chastise the bad’. Stirring stuff, I thought, and turned eagerly to page 103.
And to my further surprise, and even greater joy, I found paragraph 26.1.5, which espouses a view I hold very dear, and which I express in my own words in my book’s introduction, in the context of the perils of ‘best practice’ to good reporting. Although I think I prefer Sir Donald’s words – a little hellfire and bloody damnation never go amiss, and ‘pernicious’ sums it up perfectly:
I believe that this concept [best practice] has been a pernicious addition to the lexicon and one that allows, indeed even encourages, lazy thinking. It is too seductive for people to retreat behind a best practice defence of their actions. What matters is that the right practice has been followed and that may well be different in different companies and at different times. What matters is what is right for a particular company, with its particular problems and its particular management at this particular moment given its particular circumstances. Best practice concepts drive out innovation as it is always safer to go with the herd and claim that an action is best practice rather than take a bolder and individual step.
Reporters, take note…