What should an organisation do, that sees intellectual credibility, public opinion and economic opportunity slipping away from it?

Richard Murphy has just published a blog post on  Ernst & Young report on country-by-country corporate taxes reporting, and discussed about the problems the Big Four have with transparency.

In the comments, "Pellinor" disagrees with Murphy but do not argument at all why companies like EY would deliver a more solid audit than if  it is delivered by much more transparent organizations like CA, TJN. The question remains, as Murphy said, "when it comes to assessing the truth and fairness of the resulting reports."

At the end, it is always the same thing: transparency has the unique virtue to smartly solve the dilemma: who will keep the keepers? Who will watch the watchers?

With a transparent system, there is no difference between people watched and watchers. Everybody can potentially watch everybody, with several levels of attention. Transparency means a more social way to control and drive the economy. Transparency emphasizes social networks.

And because transparency is a value on the uptrend (read my article about young europeans and the coming decade in Magazine of Political Anticipation #3), there is nothing EY or others can do to successfully oppose to this rise. Obviously more transparency in corporate taxes means a breaking trend in the oligopolistic market of accountancy. The only reasonable strategy to embrace for them is then to recognize this anticipated event as soon as possible and to build strategic partnerships with CA, TJN and others.