This paper applies ideas from Beck, Power and Collins & Evans to
investigate why crises triggered by societal risks heighten tension
between self-regulated experts and the state, and why this increased
tension threatens professional self-regulation. Using an Irish case of
the regulation of professional auditors, we find that Beck helps us to
understand the accounting bodies’ view of their own position as experts
and their role in mitigating risk. Beck’s idea of a closed
organizational roof, Collins and Evans (2002) work on waves of risk and
expertise, and Power’s insights on the significance of public perception
of risk are deployed as a framework to explore why these bodies lost
power to a non-expert state which more clearly grasped the importance of
lay power in a time of crisis. We propose the idea of professional
regulation as a form of societal risk governance; this provides a frame
to investigate why the state was able to harness a growing public
disquiet to assert more control in their relationship with the
professional bodies, and underscores the precedence of public interest
over expertise in the self-regulatory debate. An analysis of the
perspectives of government, profession and civil society illustrates
inherent vulnerabilities in the authority of a self-regulated
professional body excessively reliant on its own expertise.