A colleague sent me a newspaper story that focuses on a former CPA-Consulting firm we both worked for, one of the largest and most respected firms of its kind in the country (It’s in the ‘Big Ten’, and in the Fortune Magazine‘s Top 100 Companies to Work For every year, usually in the Top 10 or 15.) Apparently, they “botched” a tech plan estimate (by $2.4 million) for the Township I live in, and this is making news. All the blame, of course, is on the private firm.
However, looking more closely at the facts reveals that same, old thing rearing its ugly head: government itself. The estimate-consulting gig was done under near-impossible conditions, with poor communication and poor information. This is what it is like to deal with and work within the government sector. ‘Tis why I gave up auditing - horrible, horrible - especially auditing in the government sector.
People can’t begin to imagine what a government audit is like. Or, for that matter, performing consulting services for any government entity. It is fundamentally futile to try and treat any government entity like anything in the private sector, and that’s what auditors and consultants continue to not understand. It’s because their mentality is such that they make little or no distinction between that which is privately-owned and that which is subject to public funding, approval, and democratic vote. Thanks all the nation’s business schools for not teaching proper distinctions.
The methodology - with government entities - is not one of profit and benefiting consumers, but rather, it is a methodology of “This is what we want, and how much we can pillage from the public to get it, so somebody tell us what we want to hear with regard to costs.” The politics at the local level are heavy-handed and aimed toward empowering the bureaucrats in charge. Any presentation made to any local board (Township Board of Trustees, School Board, etc.) is made to tell them what they want to hear; tell them they have enough money to go ahead with the project without further bond issue problems; and to make the Board bureaucrats happy.
Well, the CPA firm did that all that, cutting all corners that were possible to cut, and now, they are being blamed for incompetence. The CPA firm, by the way, is now being held to providing many months of “free services” to the Township.
