In recent decades, research on public auditing has increased as a result of the need for increased knowledge and problematizing of the implementation side of politics due to, for example, New Public Management reforms and new governance. So far, however, research has mainly focused on so-called individual and controlling supervision where the focus has been on legal certainty and equal treatment for the individual, as well as on how auditing limits the discretion of the welfare professionals. Accordingly, the focus has been on how the public auditors exerts influence on the objects of supervision in different ways. What the previous research not has done to the same extent is to examine and problematize the audit relationship from the other side: how the objects of auditing affect the auditors – as examples of street level bureaucrats - room for action, integrity and independence. Consequently, we know very little about inspection agencies discretion, strategies and ideals. Also, previous research has neglected a specific form of public auditing: regulatory inspection agencies on the state level that audit other state agencies, in other words: when the state audit the state. This kind of public auditing differ from all other forms of public auditing, in particular from regular controlling inspections, as it lacks the auditor’s rights to sanction. Therefore, the relationship between the auditor and the auditee can become more horizontal, and the auditor may be dependent on the auditee in the auditing process. Accordingly, research of this inspection raises the questions how auditors and auditees are linked and interrelated, and whether the relationship can decrease possibilities to accountability. Therefore, this paper explores whether the design and exercise of this certain public auditing – soft state inspections with no sanctions- can circumscribe the discretion of the audit agencies. The article aims to develops a framework for understanding what explains the choice of auditing strategies to manage compliance in soft auditing were no audit muscles exists. The article explores this by a comparative case study of the Swedish Social Insurance Inspectorate's (ISF) auditing of the Swedish Social insurance bureaucracy (SIA) and the Swedish Unemployment Insurance Inspectorate (IAF)' auditing of the Swedish Public Employment Agency (PES).