AUDITING, HERMENEUTICS, AND SUBJECTIVITY

I argue that our understanding of auditing as a normatively hermeneuti cal (interpretative) practice is deformed by the emergence of scientis m and technocratic rationality in auditing, and, relatedly, that the a uditor's understanding of auditing's judgmental character is displaced by the recent development of arid reliance on highly structured audit methodologies. The result is that auditing no longer knows ''itself'' as a hermeneutical practice, with the further consequence that audito rs may lose their capacity for moral and critical and hence for moral agency with respect to their actions qua auditor For this claim I draw on Aristotelian arguments about phronesis or practical ethical reason ing about good action. The point is not that there is an earlier Golde n Age of auditing to recover, but rather that the auditor's potentiali ty for realizing ''the good'' in auditing through phronesis eroded by the technocratic deformity of practice.