There appears to be no evidence of wrong doing in connection with Northern Rock. But the grilling of partner Richard Sexton by the Commons Treasury select committee revised some questions. Namely, what is the purpose of audit and how best can auditors clarify what their task is when working with complex institutions like banks?

Sexton was reasonably clear that his role was to provide comfort on the financial statements. The audit was not about giving public testimony on the strategy adopted by the bank and the risks involved. That was a job for executives and internal auditors. Analysts themselves should have known what was going on, though I don’t recall any of them raising the alarm.

It is a measure of the public misunderstanding of audit that fingers are so readily pointed at auditors. But auditors are partly to blame. While many will privately agree they have failed to communicate their responsibilities, there is little evidence of anyone putting that right. If you want understanding, you have to help the process and auditors have avoided publicity for too long. That’s the real problem here.

uditors have been guilty of allowing people to think what they want. There’s a certain professional timidity, disguised as client confidentiality, that demands correcting.

If you really want auditors to deal with problems such as those at Northern Rock, you have to redefine their role. Until the communication improves, auditors can expect to remains everyone’s favourite whipping boy.