In this day and age, can you imagine a business process that cannot be tech enabled or at least tech-facilitated? If you cannot, you are friends with technology, and this would be an amusing read for you. But if you can, you are where the blame lies!
True that, mostly we make arguments for the sake of arguments, and technology could similarly be blamed for one’s own troubles, after all the ages old adage of a bad workman quarrels with his tools stays uber relevant, putting blame anywhere but where it belongs. When it comes to confronting audit findings, arguments such as these become the gold standard.
Because then it’s not just about blaming the system or saving one’s own a*se. It’s primarily to confront the auditor by harping on the same string; downplaying the findings, belittling the auditor! A little beforehand behind the scenes movement, lo and behold! It certainly helps!
Unfortunately, some do believe that in the era of generational AI, it is technology driving the people and no longer the people driving it. But I am not one of those people. To me making a business case for using generational AI, selecting the one that’s eventually put to use, programming it to your requirements, drawing inferences from its outputs and executing actions on this is stuff people do. So, who drives what? You choose!
And what about the rudimentary tech that’s not even AI? How can one possibly blame that? Because until exposed it was basic enough to be easy? Because previously it blended perfectly well with the culture of no efficiency, no productivity and no improvement? Because it helped the incapable and the incompetent lot to be comfortable managing it? Or the best one, it always helped justify requirements for resources year after year?
So, the blame clearly lies not with the tech, but with the people insisting on its continued use, even when it had passed its utility lifetime. Maybe, instead of being a regressive or a retarded approach in continuing to use such a tech, actually it was a matter of foresight on the part of the client management?
Dazzled? Let me elaborate on my point. This foresight was being able to use the tech as a scapegoat when the culling is called! To hide behind the tech, so that the incompetencies of the resources remain unexposed. To offer the tech for sacrifice when it’s time to offer one’s scalp. That’s one hell of a foresight!
Simply because, till the time it isn’t exposed, it remained a good sport to show how resources were doing most of the tasks themselves, so that the volume of work could be shown, so that the tech could be labelled super complex leading to massive workload and busy schedules and of course continuing resource requirements.
Such tech fulfilled the current needs, when no one was questioning a)- the sheer amount of resources while using tech and b)- all the laborious manual work when tech was in place and the future needs sorted out as well, such that when exposed, tech would be responsible rather than the people.
Let’s now move on to another argument given when passing the buck on to the tech. A number of compensating controls have been put in place to compensate for the lack of efficient and effective input, processing and output controls, so the tech remains useful, and the resources required to operate and manage it extremely important.
The question is, why would someone invest in technology that has no in-built controls of its own or that needs to rely on the people to be effective, efficient and even reliable? What is the point of investing in a tech that relies on manual control, processing and review of the data fed into it? What is the use of having a technological solution that neither enables anything nor prevents anything?
Isn’t it imperative to assess the real return of investment of such an investment? Is an investment that needs even greater resources for its operation and management even a good business case to begin with? And does someone asses what value of productivity is lost in being inefficient and ineffective, let alone the increase in the number of resources required to operate and manage the tech?
Aren’t these the questions that should be asked when deciding about plans for upgrading to a better technological solution? Shouldn’t the investment appraisal cover these aspects? Definitely a business case without these questions been asked cannot be established. The continuing use of an outdated, irrelevant and a garbage technological solution is then simply based on what we’ve already covered above, needless complexities and redundant activities and finally to pin the blame on.
If you’re following correctly, the fact of the matter is that the blame lies with the people selecting such tech and insisting upon its continued use. The blame lies with the people who become cozy with the deficiencies of such tech and ask the organization for more resources to operate and manage the technology. The blame lies with those who think that compensatory controls are the solution for technology that’s retrograde.
Simply because if technology is being used to make lives more complex, inefficient and ineffective, value is being eaten up not created. Even resources hired to operate and manage such technology are not being developed, but being made unemployable as their skills set becomes irrelevant.
So, the argument “it’s the system’s fault and we have compensating controls in place” simply means, the people are tech averse. They want themselves to be relied upon rather than the system. The control procedures are people driven and depend on their integrity rather than being system driven and dependent.
With such technology in place, one could achieve anything that would be symptomatic of a collapse of the overall control system and non-accomplishment of control objectives. Furthermore, it makes desired (not actual) reporting easier. Would one want to rely on it or not depend on what are the objectives of those operating and managing such technology.
I recently heard this argument on a report carrying more than 10 findings. Of these, only 2 component findings highlighted issues with the accounting system. However, in order to belittle the report, all of it was labelled as a report on system issues, even when the responses to these clearly elaborated the causes as people related. It was conveniently ignored that technology used, the system, was dependent on the people as they were the ones having those much-touted compensating controls.
The client was earnest to blame the system and its compulsions but had no idea about the implications of how they were operating and managing the system and the compensating controls. And by doing that, it yielded causations to our findings; the most obvious being sheer incompetence and idiocy of the resources responsible for the system!
Systems are problematic because their owners are incompetent and wary of improving!
The system didn’t come first, the people did, remember? It was and it is the people who make the system. Cuss the system all you want, pin every blame on it, but it would always have a way to come back and haunt you.
Even if for that it has to side with or depend on your internal auditors!