A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

A Philosophical Comedy in Three Parts

(Socrates Explains Auditing to a Very Slow Student)

Dramatis Personae

• Socrates – Philosopher, irritated and unpaid.
• Apprentice – An eager but dim student, fluent in curiosity, not accounting.
• CFO – A tired but triumphant modern executive.
• Audit Partner – High priest of Reasonable Assurance.
• Junior Auditor – Silent observer, always writing.

Part I – Why “Unqualified” Means “Clean”

Apprentice: Master, I am baffled. Why do auditors call their best opinion unqualified? When my mother says I am unqualified, it is not a compliment.

Socrates: (Groaning) Because, my dear imbecile, the gods of accounting delight in contradiction. When they say unqualified, they mean without reservations. When they say clean, they mean no visible dirt. When they say material, they mean big enough to embarrass someone important.

Apprentice: So, “unqualified” means “good,” even though it sounds “bad”?

Socrates: Precisely. It is the linguistic gymnastics of a profession allergic to plain speech. An unqualified opinion is a clean one—no disclaimers, no confessions, no footnotes whispering “don’t sue us.”

Apprentice: But why not call it a perfect opinion?

Socrates: Because auditors fear perfection. Perfection implies responsibility, and responsibility implies liability. Instead, they seek the safer realm of reasonable assurance—a phrase that means, “We’re fairly sure everything’s fine, unless it isn’t.”

Apprentice: What about this word materiality they keep using?

Socrates: Ah, yes—their sacred idol. Materiality is the holy threshold between sin and salvation. A missing coin? Immaterial. A missing treasury? Material. And if the city burns down? “Subsequent event—disclosed in Note 17.”

Apprentice: And who decides what’s material?

Socrates: A mythical being known as the reasonable user of financial statements—a creature never seen in nature, but often invoked in court.

Part II – Socrates’ Audit Field Notes

(From the philosopher’s unwilling internship.)

Day 1 – Arrival
They descend upon the city like well-dressed locusts carrying laptops. They introduce themselves politely, then demand ledgers, receipts, and things long lost to history. “We’ll only be here a few weeks,” they say. Three moons later, they’re still in the break room, testing petty cash.

Day 7 – Sampling
They claim to find the truth by studying ten transactions out of ten thousand. “Representative sample,” they say. “Reasonable assurance,” they add. I call it faith healing with spreadsheets.

Day 15 – Materiality
The auditors debate whether a missing goat is material. After long deliberation, they conclude that one goat is immaterial—unless the herd only had one.

Day 29 – Planning the Plan
They plan the audit, then plan the planning, then plan a meeting to discuss whether the plan aligns with the planned planning. I admire their devotion to process, if not progress.

Day 45 – Walkthrough
An auditor asks me to “walk him through” our cash disbursement cycle. We literally walk—to the market, buy a chicken, and pay the vendor. “Control deficiency,” he mutters. I agree.

Day 73 – The Opinion Letter
After months of work and the sacrifice of several interns, the final parchment emerges:

“In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects…”

Translated from Auditorian: “We didn’t find anything catastrophic, though we looked very hard and are still suspicious.”

Closing Reflection:
Auditors are philosophers of doubt. They pursue truth with calculators and disclaimers, living in eternal tension between assurance and fear of subpoena.

Part III – The Post-Audit Symposium

CFO: Finally! A clean opinion! We are vindicated.

Audit Partner: Indeed. Unqualified—no exceptions, no reservations, no surprises.

Socrates: And yet, you call it “fairly presented.” Why not “true”?

Audit Partner: Because “true” is for prophets. We offer “fair,” which is safer and billable.

Socrates: You sell comfort, not certainty.

Audit Partner: Exactly! Certainty is reckless. Comfort pays the rent.

CFO: Still, this took four months!

Audit Partner: Timeliness is immaterial. Until it surpasses a GASB requirement.

Socrates: (Sighs) So your audit is both eternal and late. How fitting. Tell me, why not simply trust the books?

Audit Partner: Because trust, unverified, is heresy.

Socrates: Then you are theologians of skepticism.

Audit Partner: (Nods) We call it professional skepticism.

Socrates: A fine term for universal suspicion.

Audit Partner: We are trained to doubt until evidence says otherwise—and even then, we document our doubt in triplicate.

CFO: Still, “unqualified” sounds insulting.

Socrates: Indeed! The irony is that the highest praise of your craft sounds like an insult. You should call it Immaculately Unqualified.

Audit Partner: We tried that once. Legal said no.

(The Junior Auditor silently logs 0.25 hours for “client philosophical engagement.”)

Socrates: And this materiality—how is it decided?

Audit Partner: We gather in secret, summon spreadsheets, and chant percentages until consensus appears.

Socrates: A ritual of quantitative mysticism! Tell me, what if you find something truly awful?

Audit Partner: Then the opinion is qualified, the CFO is nervous, and the audit partner retires early.

Socrates: (Raising his cup) To auditors—guardians of truth by approximation! May your samples be random, your conclusions conservative, and your coffee deductible!

All: Hear, hear!

Epilogue – The Ancient Spoof

(Socrates unrolls an ancient scroll.)

“The typical accountant is a man, past middle age, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, passive, non-committal, with eyes like a codfish; polite in contact but at the same time unresponsive, calm and damnably composed as a concrete post or a plaster-of-Paris cast; a petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm of the friendly germ, minus bowels, passion or a sense of humor. Happily, they never reproduce, and all of them finally go to Hell.”
— Elbert Hubbard, early 1900s (often quoted mid-century for auditors and proudly found in the preface of some auditing reference material)

Socrates: A cruel jest—but one senses it was written by a man recently audited.

Final Hymn: “Reasonable Assurance”

(To the solemn tempo of an office coffee maker)

Verse 1
Oh, auditors come in the fall’s rain,
With checklists, ticks, and doubt’s domain.
They question all, from cash to soul,
Then bill us hourly for control.

Chorus
Reasonable assurance, softly we pray,
Nothing material shall ruin our day.
Clean though unqualified, cautious yet bright,
Blessed be GAAP, and good-night, good-night.

Verse 2
They test the goats, they test the grain,
They find no fraud—just minor pain.
They sign their names, they bow, they leave,
And send an invoice we can’t believe.

Final Chorus
Reasonable assurance, hold fast, hold true,
For certainty’s dangerous and lawsuits accrue.
Clean though unqualified, may wisdom delight,
For even Socrates closes the books at night.