It’s a pitched battle the likes of which Washington and Wall Street have never seen... On one side: Arthur Levitt Jr, chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, convinced that greed and arrogance have diverted the accounting profession from its mission... he sees a massive conflict of interest between accountants’ duties as auditors and the profits they earn as consultants to the same corporate clients. On the other side: the Big Five accounting giants, all opposed in varying degrees to the SEC chief’s drive. With consulting now contributing 51 percent of their revenues... the Big Five see Levitt’s campaign slamming the door on future opportunities.”

Those aren’t my words. They’re from BusinessWeek, 25 September 2000. In the months that followed, it was the SEC that triumphed. Today, we’ve grown familiar with the new brands that emerged from the enforced division of consulting and auditing: Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting); BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting); CGEY (now simply Capgemini); and IBM Global Business Services (what’s left of PwC Consulting).

Why dig up this history? Because there’s a useful parallel here. Regular readers of IT Week will know that the Federation Against Software Theft (Fast) takes a similarly two-pronged approach to its business. As many readers have testified, Fast is an organisation where auditing and consulting overlap. In Fast’s case it aims to audit software licences rather than finances, but it seems a similar conflict of interests has arisen.

When an end-user organisation agrees to a visit from Fast, the IT manager will typically presume that he is talking to Fast the anti-piracy organisation. The IT manager will of course know that money lies behind the visit, but the assumption will often be that Fast is acting on behalf of software vendors – and that if licences prove to be in order then no further action will be needed.

What most IT managers do not assume beforehand is that Fast representatives are typically salespeople paid to sell Fast membership, and keen to sign up new customers of Fast Corporate Services (FCS). Many IT chiefs have been left very angry as a result.

According to its web site, FCS provides services to help firms “identify and eliminate risks relating to software management”, whereas Fast itself was set up “to protect the intellectual property rights of software publishers”.

As was the case with the Big Five auditors, Fast argues that it can police its own independence. But the testimonies IT Week has collected from IT managers suggest otherwise.

Nobody expects Fast or FCS to shut up shop. However, I do believe there should be clean air between the two businesses. A new name for FCS, without the word “Fast”, would help IT managers to know who they are dealing with.

Of course there is a big difference between the Big Five and Fast: financial auditing is a legal requirement, Fast’s visits are strictly optional. Assuming you audit your licences regularly, educate your workforce about illicit duplication and take reasonable steps to police your network, you really don’t need to worry. You don’t have to let anyone from any part of Fast in through your front door.