The metaphor of the art critic is instrumental in developing the auditor’s self-confidence in the Office’s expertise. It implies that auditors’ expertise, as critics, can be easily exported to a wide sphere of activities. Having a detailed knowledge of a given activity is not crucial for auditors to assess performance; what is crucial is generic auditing knowledge (Power, 1997b).
To consolidate its claims to expertise, the Office needed to enrol the government in the indirect assessment model. One auditor described the argument to persuade the Provincial Treasury about the appropriateness of the model: