Recent research suggests inspections by auditing oversight bodies may lead to unintended consequences by incentivizing auditors to anticipate and manage inspection risk at the engagement level. Our study focuses on the account level, where detailed planning judgments are made, and provides evidence of the impact of a misalignment between inspection and misstatement risks on audit effectiveness and efficiency. Employing a two-stage experiment with 175 experienced auditors, we manipulate inspection risk between participants (high versus low) in the initial program planning stage and then within subjects provide fieldwork findings indicating an increase in misstatement risk (low to high) in the second stage. As hypothesized, auditors increase planned hours in response to an account with higher inspection risk and correspondingly assign fewer audit hours to accounts with lower inspection risk. This shifting of hours can reduce audit quality since despite lower inspection risk the underlying misstatement risks remain constant. Also, in the fieldwork stage participants allocate fewer additional hours the more hours they initially planned for the high inspection risk account. Additional analyses further reveal that auditors with inspection experience are particularly susceptible to this dampened response. In all, our findings suggest inspection risks potentially harm audit efficiency and effectiveness.

Auditing standards emphasize the importance of strong auditor communications with the audit committee to enhance financial reporting quality. This study examines the effects of audit committee skepticism and reward power, two pervasive audit committee characteristics, on auditor communications with the audit committee. Drawing on accountability theory, we predict and find that greater audit committee skepticism and reward power induce the auditor to communicate more information and report on a more timely basis. Seventy-nine audit partners and managers participated in an experiment where we manipulate between-subjects high or low audit committee skepticism (quantity of probing questions) and high or low reward power (exercising full authority to hire/compensate the auditor versus relying on management). Participants responded to a realistic case regarding an inventory obsolescence issue. A follow-up experiment with 30 participants indicates significant mediation for accountability. The findings underscore the importance of audit committee skepticism and reward power in enhancing auditor communications.

SUMMARY Prior research finds that the presence of accounting financial expertise (AFE) on the audit committee (AC) enhances financial reporting quality. The current study provides a broad examination of the effect of the AFE residing in the AC chair on the monitoring of financial reporting quality and the audit process. Based on a sample of over 13,840 observations from U.S. public companies, we find that AFE of the AC chair is associated with lower levels of earnings management and enhanced monitoring of the audit process. When augmented by AC members with AFE, AC chair AFE is also negatively associated with reduced misstatement risk. This finding suggests appointing an AFE to the AC may not in itself be sufficient to fully enhance oversight quality, unless the committee also has a chair who possesses AFE. Finally, chair AFE is also found to enhance the likelihood of reporting material control weaknesses and goodwill impairments.

Personal ties (e.g., belonging to the same country club) and/or professional ties (e.g., serving on boards together) between the CEO and audit committee members can potentially impair members' objectivity. Additionally, prior research indicates that audit committee member industry expertise enhances financial reporting quality. In an experiment with 342 reasonably informed investors, we find, as hypothesized by Source Credibility Theory (SCT), personal ties negatively impact investors’ assessments of audit committee independence more than professional ties, and industry expertise enhances assessments of competence. We also find investors assess audit committees with no ties and industry expertise (personal ties and no industry expertise) as the most (least) effective and indicate the highest (lowest) likelihood of investing. Further, extending SCT we find the incremental positive effect of industry expertise is greater when there are personal ties than when there are no ties. In a path model, competence and independence assessments directly affect each other, and in turn affect assessments of audit committee effectiveness and investment decisions. Finally, in a second experiment we find reasonably informed investors recognize variations in the nature of personal ties and that industry expertise attenuates the effect of advisory ties but not close friendship ties.

ABSTRACT Errors reflect unintended deviations from plans or goals and commonly carry negative connotations. Although errors cannot be eliminated, they offer opportunities for learning and innovation. Audit firms employ powerful mechanisms, such as review processes, to prevent or detect audit errors and safeguard their work in the public interest. At the same time, the profession recognizes positive long‐term outcomes of errors in terms of continuous learning to enhance auditor skills and, ultimately, audit quality. The current study employs semistructured interviews with Dutch auditors to investigate how they manage the tensions emanating from extant public and regulatory demands for flawless audits while embracing errors as opportunities for learning. Our findings reveal that auditors express a positive attitude toward openly communicating audit errors, but, in substance, they espouse negative emotions and defensive strategies for fear of repercussions. We argue that the excessive emphasis audit firms and oversight bodies place on error prevention conditions auditors into perceiving errors as negative and avoidable events. We assert these attitudes result from the profession's efforts to maintain status and legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the regulator, where any auditor error may shed doubt on auditors' work in the public interest. In sum, our findings indicate that viewing errors as incompatible with audit work makes the profession susceptible not only to repeating errors but also to missing out on opportunities to improve services and to achieve innovation.

SUMMARY The PCAOB, in its inspection process, has historically focused on reporting audit deficiencies and used a risk-weighted selection method. In two experiments (focusing on a “micro” and a “macro” investment), we take a “what if” exploratory public policy perspective of evaluating the potential effects on investors' audit quality judgments and investment decisions of two evolving PCAOB inspection practices: disclosure of audit strengths and deficiencies, and the use of a random inspection selection method. In both experiments, we manipulate: inspection reporting (only deficiencies under the historical PCAOB inspection reporting; only deficiencies under a “balanced” PCAOB reporting; or a report where strengths are present but outnumbered by deficiencies) and inspection selection method (risk-weighted or random). We find that disclosure of audit strengths is highly relevant to investment decisions, through influencing investors' audit quality assessments and confidence in financial reporting. Investors also consider inspection selection method in macro-level, but not in micro-level judgments.

SUMMARY Despite concerns that profit-sharing plans might have a detrimental effect on audit quality, there is little empirical evidence on this issue. We examine the effects of the type of profit-sharing plan, level of client importance, and auditor reinforcement sensitivity (joint sensitivity to rewards and punishments) on auditor reporting decisions. By relying on agency theory and reinforcement sensitivity theory, we posit that the joint effects of profit-sharing and client importance on auditors' decisions are contingent on reinforcement sensitivity. In an experiment with 450 audit partners and managers, we manipulate type of profit-sharing plan and client importance, and measure extroversion and neuroticism. We find the highest audit quality when profit-sharing is based on firm performance, client importance is low, and reinforcement sensitivity is high. Thus, instead of just modifying the type of profit-sharing plans, it is the mix of economic incentives and personality traits that affect audit quality.

Errors reflect unintended deviations from plans or goals, and commonly carry negative connotations. While errors cannot be eliminated, they offer opportunities for learning and innovation. Audit firms employ powerful mechanisms, such as detailed audit manuals and review processes, to prevent or detect audit errors and safeguard their work in the public interest. At the same time, the profession recognizes potentially positive long-term outcomes of errors in terms of continuous learning to enhance auditor skills and, ultimately, audit quality. The current study employs semi-structured interviews with Dutch auditors to investigate how they manage the tensions emanating from perceiving audit errors as a threat to their public-interest work while embracing such incidents as opportunities for learning. Our findings reveal that auditors express an open attitude towards learning from audit errors, but, in substance, they espouse negative emotions and defensive strategies for fear of repercussions. We show that the excessive emphasis audit firms and regulatory oversight bodies place on error prevention conditions auditors into perceiving errors as negative and avoidable events. We argue these attitudes result from the profession’s efforts to maintain status and legitimacy, where any auditor error may elicit regulatory scrutiny and concomitantly shed doubt on auditors’ work in the public interest.

SUMMARY Regulators have expressed concerns about auditors' tendency to over-rely on imprecise compensating controls when evaluating the severity of control deficiencies. We provide evidence on whether prompting auditors to use a prudent official's evaluative perspective will mitigate this tendency. We hypothesize that auditors who are prompted to adopt the prudent official's perspective evaluate compensating controls and the severity of control deficiencies more effectively than those who are not prompted. We examine our hypotheses by manipulating a prompt to adopt the prudent official's perspective (present versus absent) and the precision of compensating controls (precise versus imprecise) in a 2 × 2 between subjects experiment where experienced auditors evaluate a revenue control deficiency that resulted in an immaterial misstatement. The experimental results are consistent with our hypotheses and support the conclusion that regulators and firms can alter auditors' evaluative perspective to achieve more effective assessment of risk-related conditions.

SUMMARY After the global 2007–2008 financial crisis, regulatory bodies proposed alternative auditor selection processes to enhance auditor independence such as mandatory audit firm rotation or mandatory tendering (i.e., rotation that allows for the current auditor to be reappointed). However, these alternative selection processes may not be effective if management has substantial influence over auditor appointment decisions. We posit that disclosures of high appointment power of the audit committee will enhance the perceived effectiveness of rotation and tendering, and thus increase investment recommendations. In an experimental study involving 118 experienced investment professionals, we examine the impact of the auditor selection process (mandatory rotation, mandatory tendering, and voluntary selection) and the appointment power of the audit committee (high, low) on investment recommendations. We find that audit committee appointment power affects investment recommendations only when a possible auditor change is anticipated (i.e., in the case of rotation and tendering), but not when the auditor selection is voluntary. Further, rotation and tendering lead to a higher recommended investment likelihood than voluntary selection, but only when an audit committee has high appointment power. In all, the findings underscore that investors do not view auditor selection processes in isolation of a company's internal corporate governance mechanisms. JEL Classifications: M42; M48; G11.

The business risk auditing (BRA) approach was developed in the late 1990s and partly incorporated into audit standards in the early 2000s. As such, BRA was a significant innovation in audit methodology. In our interview study, we examine the experiences of 38 non-Big 4 auditors toward the theorization and diffusion of BRA. We use the widely recognized framework from Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings (2002), emphasizing the importance of legitimacy within an organizational field, to evaluate the change process toward BRA. First, we observe that the theorization of the new concept of BRA was often of limited success as many non-Big 4 auditors found it to be too complex and remained unconvinced that BRA was developed in response to problems with previous audit approaches ("moral legitimacy''). The lack of moral legitimacy can provide the underlying basis for resistance toward change. Second, auditors often expressed skeptical views about the benefits of BRA ("pragmatic legitimacy''), resulting in only limited use of nonmandatory BRA tools. Finally, we find that auditors were divided in considering elements of BRA as the natural way of doing audits ("cognitive legitimacy''). In all, our findings help to understand the role of regulatory mechanisms and of non-Big 4 audit firms in institutional processes in auditing.

ABSTRACT We propose and test a model that links the antecedents of consultation between auditors and forensic specialists to the work performed and the overall effectiveness of the consultation. The antecedents are auditee, auditor, and forensic specialist related, while the work is related to risk assessment, risk responsiveness, and teamwork. A path model, based on a field survey of 57 experienced auditors, shows that forensic specialists' understanding of the client's business and engagement objectives is positively associated with risk assessments and effective teamwork, which, in turn, are positively associated with overall consultation effectiveness. Further, involving forensic specialists early in the engagement is associated with improved teamwork and risk responsiveness. Qualitative responses identify other factors, such as investment in joint extra-collaboration enterprises, which may moderate the association among the antecedents, work, and outcomes. A second survey clarifies the circumstances under which consultation enhances risk assessments, provides examples of unique procedures performed by the forensic specialists, and clarifies the effect of the consultation on cost and delays. Taken together, our findings provide important insights and implications for firm policy, regulatory standards, and future research. Data Availability: Contact the authors for data availability.

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of auditor task difficulty on jurors' overall assessment of audit quality following an alleged audit failure (i.e., a restatement) given audit quality indicators (AQIs). We focus on assurance of fair value estimates, a pervasive, difficult-to-audit area. Employing an experiment with prospective jurors, we manipulate auditor task difficulty (moderate or high), input AQI (high or low), and process AQI (high or low). Consistent with expectations from Attribution Theory, we find evidence, as reflected in jurors' assessments of audit quality, that higher task difficulty elicits the salience of external causes for the alleged negative audit outcome (i.e., factors beyond auditors' control) while lower task difficulty induces the salience of internal causes (i.e., factors within auditors' control). Together, our results suggest that jurors recognize the difficulty associated with auditing complex estimates, and in turn adjust their expectations regarding the level of auditor diligence that must be demonstrated, demanding a very high level of diligence (both AQI input and process) for the less difficult task while generally exhibiting lesser demands for the more difficult task. We also find that jurors' audit quality assessments are significantly linked to subsequent evaluations of auditor responsibility and to verdict decisions of auditor negligence.

A pervasive challenge for decision-makers is evaluating data of varying form (e.g., quantitative vs. qualitative) and credibility in arriving at an overall risk assessment judgment. The current study tests the efficacy of a Decision Support System (DSS) for facilitating auditors' evaluation and assimilation of financial and nonfinancial information in accurately assessing the risk of material misstatements (RMM) in financial information. Utilizing the proximity compatibility principle, the DSS manipulates the display of cues either in an integral (where pieces of information are displayed on one computer screen) or separable (where pieces of information are displayed on different computer screens) format. Based on cognitive fit theory, we expect that the integral (separable) display best supports financial (nonfinancial) information processing, leading to enhanced risk assessment performance. In addition, we predict that consistent DSS display of financial and nonfinancial information facilitates risk assessment performance. Further, this study accentuates the importance of auditors' preference for presentation of financial and nonfinancial information and consistent presentation of all the information in strengthening the effect of DSS display format on risk assessment performance. We design a case which includes a seeded high fraud risk. A total of 112 audit seniors participated in the experiment where the DSS display format was manipulated and the auditors' RMM assessments and display preferences were measured. The results support the hypotheses and highlight the value of the DSS in enhancing risk assessment performance.

The financial crisis has brought to the forefront the need for companies to effectively manage their risks. One approach that has gained prominence is enterprise risk management (ERM), but little is known about the link between ERM and the financial reporting process. This link is important, because it is imperative that the financial reporting process adequately depict the performance and associated risks of a company. Additionally, ERM affects the risks of misstatement and potential lack of adequate risk disclosures, which impact audit planning. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to examine how audit partners, CFOs, and audit committee (AC) members (“the governance triad”) view ERM as it relates to the roles of governance parties, financial reporting quality, internal controls, and external auditing. To address these issues, we conduct semi-structured interviews of experienced individuals from 11 public companies that form 11 governance triads. Results suggest that across all three types of participants, respondents emphasize risk assessment/identification and operational efficiency/effectiveness when defining ERM. However, there is substantial variation in responses which suggests that there is still lack of consensus among key players on what constitutes ERM. Interestingly, only a minority of auditors mention strategy or strategic risks in their definition of ERM. To the extent this is reflective of auditors not fully leveraging the strategic elements of ERM, auditors may be underutilizing ERM in the audit process. This concern is further corroborated in a number of comments made by CFOs and AC. Moreover, participants perceive that the audit committee and the CFO play a large role with ERM and auditors are perceived to play a lesser role. Additional analysis of the responses indicates that while participants view ERM and its effect upon the financial reporting process from both an agency and resource dependence perspective, there is a greater focus on the agency framework. In all, resource dependence may be under-emphasized by all members, but especially by CFOs and auditors. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the efficacy of using a technology based on an elaboration of the traditional fraud risk model to assess the risk of fraud and subsequently plan the audit. The fraud risk model used is based on Srivastava, Mock, and Turner (2007, 2009) and explicitly assesses the presence of fraud triangle factors and the need for forensic tests to aid in the assessment of fraud detection risk and audit planning. Previous studies that examine fraud risk decomposition simply advise subjects to assess fraud risks separately without an analytical model. We examine the effectiveness of the approach using an experiment involving 76 experienced auditors where specific fraud risks are present or absent. As expected, the results indicate that the model significantly enhances auditors' sensitivity to differences in the level of fraud risks. That is, the auditors using the fraud risk model appropriately assessed low fraud risk as low and high fraud risk as high, whereas the auditors using the traditional Audit Risk Model approach assessed fraud risk at essentially the same level under either risk condition. The experiment also investigates effects on audit program planning decisions. Contrary to expectations but consistent with prior research, the risk decomposition technology tested did not result in auditors providing more effective fraud detection procedures. In all, the results suggest that although the tested risk decomposition technology can enhance risk assessments and recognition of the need for additional forensic tests, auditors continue to have difficulties in responding to fraud risks, perhaps because they lack the requisite fraud experience and training. Data Availability: Copies of the instruments are available from the first author.

We define a misstatement effect as a tendency for auditors to take the non-detection of a misstatement as evidence of the absence of a material weakness and test the hypothesis that it occurs unconsciously in their internal control severity judgments. In a between-participants design, which is analogous to the practice setting, we find that auditors evaluate an internal control deficiency less severely when it has not led to a misstatement. However, in a within-participants design, where the misstatement manipulation (detected or not detected) is more salient, we find that auditors evaluate the deficiencies as equally severe, suggesting that the misstatement effect in the between-participants design is not intended. The findings suggest the need to consider the use of decision aids that align auditors' heuristics and knowledge. For instance, auditors may be required to document possible misstatements that could occur when evaluating control deficiencies that have not led to misstatements.

SUMMARY Prior research has largely characterized audit negotiations as a dyadic relationship between auditors and managers. However, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) substantially enhances the audit committee's oversight responsibilities for the financial reporting and auditing processes. Thus, negotiations post-SOX may be viewed as a triadic relationship that now involves the audit committee with the authority to scrutinize audit negotiations. Consistent with auditors considering their relative bargaining power and expectations of counterpart behavior, Brown-Liburd and Wright (2011) find that auditors are most contending when the audit committee is strong and the past relationship is contentious. We extend Brown-Liburd and Wright (2011) by examining the joint effects of these factors on managers' pre-negotiation judgments. We posit that rather than mirror auditor behavior, managers make different judgments because they have a different perspective and set of incentives than do auditors. Prior research suggests that managers are more flexible, more accurately determine their counterpart's goals and limits, and are more likely to use certain negotiation tactics than auditors. Further, managers have incentives to maximize the current outcome while maintaining their firm's reporting reputation. As such, managers will be less aggressive in responding to a contentious past auditor relationship, particularly in the presence of a strong audit committee that may ask difficult questions and potentially intervene against their favor. However, managers will act more aggressively to capitalize on a cooperative past auditor relationship, particularly in the presence of a weak audit committee that is passive or persuadable. To examine these two boundary conditions, we conduct an experiment with 137 experienced CFO/controllers. We find strong evidence supporting our expectations that managers act as if both the audit committee and the auditor jointly play important roles in ensuring high financial reporting quality. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.

ABSTRACT Understanding the inferences that nonprofessional investors draw from material weakness disclosures is important because of their effect on investment decisions and for assessing whether current standards serve their needs. Prior research shows that users assess higher financial reporting risk for an entity-level material weakness compared to an account-specific material weakness because they perceive the former as presenting a higher risk of potential misstatement. We extend the literature by proposing two variables (remediation and operational risks) that mediate and incrementally explain the observed relationship between the type of material weakness and financial reporting risk assessments. In an experiment involving 181 nonprofessional investors, we find, as predicted, that the entity-level material weakness signals not just a higher potential for undetected misstatements but also higher remediation and operational risks. Further, we find that the two variables fully mediate and incrementally explain the relationship between the type of material weakness and financial reporting risk assessments. To the extent that these variables are decision relevant, our findings suggest that regulators should reconsider and possibly reengineer the current disclosure regime that allows management to disclose unaudited information about these variables. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

The purpose of this study is to examine some of the potential impacts of more frequent financial reporting and concurrent assurance, as assessed by members of the assurer, preparer, and investor communities. Two hundred and fifteen participants (84 auditors, 30 controllers, 80 investors, as surrogated by MBA students, and 21 sell-side analysts) took part in an experiment where they received a case situation involving a company that was planning to voluntarily change from quarterly to monthly (daily) external financial statement reporting, without (with) assurance. After reading the case materials, the participants assessed the likely effects of such changes on the decision usefulness of financial statements, quality of earnings, financial reporting behavior, stock market price volatility, analysts' consensus forecasts, and cost of capital. The results indicate that monthly reporting without assurance would significantly enhance the decision usefulness of financial statements, improve the quality of earnings, and reduce managements' aggressiveness with respect to discretionary accounting accruals, estimates, and principles; further, the findings suggest stock price volatility would be lower, analyst consensus of future earnings estimates would increase, and cost of capital would decrease. Assessments of daily reporting were consistent with monthly reporting, yet significantly stronger. The inclusion of concurrent auditor assurance resulted in directionally consistent yet significantly pronounced results in both monthly and daily reporting conditions on all measures. Additionally, participants agreed that providing monthly reports would be technically and economically feasible at this time, while daily reporting would not be feasible.