Thanks for the replies.
I see now. Luca you were spot on. I was using nCountClicks after all. In the button click I counted clicks whereas with bButtonClicked I simply assigned True.
That the compiler doesn't warn when the scope is set to
Public seems to indicate that it won't pass judgment on usage in the current module as there may be an external reference which the compiler can't see during the warning pass.
The takeaway is the warning was valid. I was only assigning a value without any operations on a private variable in the current module.
Doing anything with the variable (a test, assignment to other boolean) will satisfy the linter.
I'm not suggesting one should add a random "if" or an assignment as a workaround. Use, the 'ignore comment trick if you must.
In the app from which this example was taken, I had commented out the test on the bButtonClicked variable and then started getting the warning. Just needed to comment out a few more lines where the variable was declared and assigned.