FD’s given to creeping up on me recently and asking questions with a meaningful catch in his voice. He usually has an unnerving sense of timing, too, like when I’ve just logged on to MSN Messenger.

It’s a mystery how that considerable bulk can move around the office so quietly. Having caught me unawares, he compounds his triumph by asking me an open question or passing some incomprehensible comment.

This time it was “what’s the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?” As usual he didn’t wait for an answer and instead threw a photocopy of his much-cherished Microsoft’s Spreadsheet Compliance White Paper on my desk and wandered off, suspiciously cheerful.

The part highlighted in FD’s special green highlighter – everyone else has to use yellow because yellow doesn’t show up over green – read: “The Microsoft Corporation Financial Compliance Group works with management, internal auditors and external auditors to perform an inventory of important spreadsheets used for financial reporting. A recent inventory yielded 42 business-critical spreadsheets in use.”

It seems Big Bill’s bureaucratic boot boys had deployed a “filtering criteria” to find these “business criticals”. I won’t spare you the Americanised details.

The five criteria were split into three quantitative criteria and two qualitative criteria. The quantitative “business criticals” were spreadsheets that documented “a material journal entry greater than a pertinent dollar threshold”, or that “serves a recoding ledger for an account with a balance greater than a pertinent dollar threshold”, or any spreadsheet that directly supports a financial statement disclosure.

I felt this did a lot to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the report. The threshold was derived as a percentage of materiality; in other words, the number the auditors make up as a pseudo-scientific justification for how little work they think they can get away with.

In contrast, the qualitative criteria were much more straightforward: whether the spreadsheet was complicated and whether the spreadsheet was used by a department or division that hasn’t got a clue what it was doing.

The last bit was paraphrased a little – but not much. Which, in Blaminio’s case is tick and tick for pretty much everything I churn out.

Before I’d finished reading the white paper, an email appeared from FD. “Subject: What’s the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?” Message: “Report on the number of mission-critical spreadsheets currently in use in Blaminio. This is not a request.”

FD had bought the pitch. C’mon: if Microsoft has only 42 business-critical spreadsheets, then my name is Melinda Gates. Blaminio, a speck of dust in the corporate cosmos compared with the Microsoft empire, must have hundreds of spreadsheets that fit the bill.

After a re-read of the criteria, it was obvious a selective approach was needed – we’ll call it “sampling”, shall we? The Barry Cells definition of a mission-critical spreadsheet is: “if it’s used in producing the final accounts; to represent financial statement information to the auditors; or in a strategy document, business plan or investment proposal”.

After that, it was a case of sending off moderately snotty emails to anyone in the company who had sent me a spreadsheet that looked dangerous.

Then I spent a few mindless days compiling a list of spreadsheets – using a spreadsheet, naturally – of the answers received. Even FD was forced to answer the email, though he did have to be chased up a couple of times for the board’s expenses workbook.

The list grew at a satisfying rate; the Microsoft threshold of 42 was passed in just one email from the tax monkeys. I even contributed a few dozen spreadsheets of my own.

It took several weeks before I sent a final listing to FD. While I was beginning to see the value of the exercise – and it forced people to think a bit harder about how reliable their jockeying is – there was still something puzzling.

What was FD and the board going to do with my analysis?

The answer came back a day after the board meeting. “Good work,” said FD. “I was able to report that despite extensive use of mission-critical workbooks, the use of spreadsheets in the company is considered mostly harmless.” Mostly harmless! How dare he!

Related tags: microsoft, fd, blaminio, mission critical, spreadsheets,