The future of public audit

I've just read a pamphlet called The Future of Public Audit (published by Solace Foundation Imprint). There are about a dozen articles/short essays in the pamphlet and, rather like the stereotypes of auditors, they are worthy but rather dull. Or, perhaps, a better adjective would be "earnest". The articles incorporate interesting ideas and insights about things like trust, transparency, the demise of the Audit Commission and self-improvement but they don't sparkle. Perhaps part of the reason for this is the subject matter itself but should articles about audit will always be so dry?

Perhaps it is the writers rather than the subject. All of the authors of the pamphlet I read were male, white and most were, to be polite about it, substantially experienced. We could do with some different people writing about this subject (and other aspects of financial management) to get some diversity of views and to do for the subject (in a small way) what Brian Cox is doing for science: making people interested in it.

I guess I have to be part of the answer. Here I am blogging about public finance so it is incumbent on me to make what I write interesting. I certainly hope to do that with posts like the one about the film Moneyball. I also try to do it in my lectures by including video and images in presentations and telling stories from my experience in order to illuminate the subject. But, nevertheless, I can't rest on my laurels. During the 1996 European Championships, Ruud Gullit coined the phrase "sexy football" to describe teams whose play was artistic and entertaining as well as effective. I don't think we can have "sexy audit" but could we at least have some sexy articles about audit? That's a challenge I've set myself.

Is Ruud thinking about how to make public audit sexy?