Strained Integrity and Influence by Dialogue Insights of Performance Auditors at the Swedish National Audit Office

The basic assumption of this study is that any performance audit that involves some kind of interaction with the auditee also means that the SAI and the auditor needs to mitigate integrity, and thus independence-, risks. A more formative approach, as opposed to summative, could mean important risks to integrity as it will involve the auditees more. In the space for performance auditor discretion, the performance auditors need to balance parliamentary directives, good social scientific methods and external norms, as well as codes of ethics. This multiple case-study among state auditors in Sweden seeks to explore the auditors ʼ actions under the specific institutional and statutory conditions, and answer to the overarching question: are integrity and involvement contradictive values in state performance audits? How are risks for integrity mitigated on an auditor level at the Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO)? The data material consists of five cases of performance audit. Two auditors have been interviewed for each case, about their own professiona