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I recently decided that there was no longer space to store 20 years worth of Accountancy and Accountancy Age. Prior to disposal I reviewed all the back issues for articles of particular note worth saving. In the course of this process, a number of things were striking. First, articles on financial reporting were conspicuous in the 1980s, and in the 1990s it was auditing which seemed to be the main object of discussion. Second, risk and risk management begin to receive regular exposure only from about the mid‐1990s onwards. In particular, the late 1990s reveal an increasing commentary on practice management and risks to professional partnerships.

This article explores fundamental issues in performance measurement systems broadly conceived. Three key moments or themes are identified. First, the foundations of measurement in counting practices, and their inherent reductionism, are considered. Second, the relations between measurement and technologies of monitoring and control, such as auditing, are discussed. Third, first- and second-order measurement (meta-measurement) are distinguished, respectively as particular institutions of counting and data production, and as related dense networks of calculating experts operating on these numbers within specific cultures of objectivity. Finally, arguments about the consequences of performance measurement systems are evaluated, contrasting democratic enthusiasm for performance measurement control technologies with the view that they are some kind of ‘fatal remedy’. In place of a simple dichotomy of trust or distrust in numbers, the development of performance measurement instruments is argued to be a cycle of innovation, crisis and reform, which continually expands into new regions of social and economic life, and which expresses varying degrees of commitment to precision.