1,967 audit emails: it was timing, not effort

My first Big-4 audit nearly slipped.

When it was over, I did not ask who should have worked harder. I read the emails. All 1,967 of them.

It was not effort. It was timing. The hard calls were landing late in the cycle, when there was little room left to make them well.

So the fix was not more hours. The hard calls moved from December to July.

It is easy to blame effort after a near miss. It is more useful to look at when things happened.

That audit covered four countries and took two months. The usual is six. It was the first under my charge. I would rather tell you what nearly went wrong than only that it finished.