Auditing, Internal control judgement, Meta Analysis

[This paper examines the comparative effect of information choice and information processing on the judgment performance of auditors over two different levels of environmental predictability. The task was the prediction of corporate failure. The study found that information choice, as evidenced through suboptimal selection of ratios, was a limiting factor in performance. However, although subjects were able to utilize all the information from the ratios they selected, they were unable to improve performance when supplied with the superior combination of ratios determined by the environmental model. Thus, information processing also became a limiting factor in performance when subjects were unable to choose their own ratios.]

[Decision makers refer to their long-term memory to test the implications of evidence about a current problem (Birnberg and Shields 1984; Libby 1989). Given this reliance on long-term memory, biases in retrieval of previously encountered information may be an important source of decision error (Libby 1989), and differences in such biases may be one explanation for differences in auditor judgment performance across experience levels. The present study adopts a schema-based framework to examine some differences in the knowledge structures and judgments of experienced and inexperienced auditors and the relationship between these knowledge structures and judgments. The study examines the recall of typical and atypical information by experienced and inexperienced auditors within the context of a going-concern situation and then relates this measure of memory to the inferences and predictive judgments made by these auditors. Three experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, auditors read a description of a company that the audit partner-in-charge had suggested may have a going-concern problem. The description consisted of items that are considered typical of a company with going-concern problems, atypical items, and filler items. After an intervening period with a distractor task, all subjects were given a recall test, were asked to infer the likelihood of certain previously unstated items being true, and to estimate the probability that the firm would fail within a year. The first of six main findings showed that experienced auditors recalled more atypical items than inexperienced auditors, but there were no differences in the number of typical items recalled. Second, experienced auditors recalled more atypical than typical items, whereas inexperienced auditors did not. Third, experienced auditors were more likely than inexperienced auditors to infer that previously unstated atypical items were true. Fourth, for both experienced and inexperienced auditors, the ratio of atypical to typical items recalled was positively correlated with the inferences made, and the inferences were negatively correlated with the predictive judgments. This last correlation was much higher for the experienced than for the inexperienced auditors. Fifth, there was no direct relationship between recall and predictive judgments. Sixth, clustering of recall on the basis of atypical/typical items was significantly higher for experienced than for inexperienced auditors and was significantly correlated with inferences for experienced auditors only. In experiments 2 and 3, we collected additional data to examine some validity threats related to the first experiment. In experiment 2, we examined the relationship between recall and judgments, using audit managers who had worked on at least one audit with going-concern as an issue. We found results similar to those of experiment 1. In experiment 3, experienced auditors performed the recall and predictive judgments without the intervening inferences task. This provided a more direct test of the relationship between recall and predictive judgments. Again, no relationship was found.]

Auditing, Auditor judgement, Review process, Internal control evaluations

This paper examines the performance of auditors in generating hypotheses in an analytical review case both prior to and after review. It partitions two possible sources of gain from the review process, namely the discussion effect and the rank effect. The discussion effect compares review groups with and without discussion. The rank effect compares seniors and audit managers. The study found that the review process results in more plausible hypotheses being generated. Discussion within the review process between reviewer and reviewee was found to be one source of gain from the review process. While there was no difference in the performance of the senior and manager reviewers, managers completed the task in less time.

This paper presents an interpersonal model of audit file review centered on the audit manager. A manager's conduct of the review is affected by four components: the manager's expectations about the client, expectations about the preparer, expectations about the partner, and the manager's own approach and circumstances. The paper then presents a comprehensive field‐based analysis of how a working paper review is conducted. It supplements the mostly experimental research on working paper review by reporting the results of a retrospective field questionnaire that asked audit managers to report on their behavior and their relationships with preparers and partners on actual audit engagements. The extent of review was sensitive to specific features of the client and the file (including risk factors), to features of the preparer, and particularly to the style of the reviewer, which was quite stable across cases. Although the evidence of managers' awareness of preparers' “stylizing” the file to suit the manager was weak, the evidence of managers' stylizing for the partners was pervasive, affecting both work done and documentation. Managers believed that good reviews emphasized key issues and risks rather than detail. Other new descriptive evidence on the nature of the review process is provided, including the purpose of the review process, how frequently surprises are found in the review process, and the qualities of good reviewers compared with poor reviewers. The implications of our model and our results for future research are outlined.

This paper presents an interpersonal model of audit file review centered on the audit manager. A manager's conduct of the review is affected by four components: the manager's expectations about the client, expectations about the preparer, expectations about the partner, and the manager's own approach and circumstances. The paper then presents a comprehensive field-based analysis of how a working paper review is conducted. It supplements the mostly experimental research on working paper review by reporting the results of a retrospective field questionnaire that asked audit managers to report on their behavior and their relationships with preparers and partners on actual audit engagements. The extent of review was sensitive to specific features of the client and the file (including risk factors), to features of the preparer, and particularly to the style of the reviewer, which was quite stable across cases. Although the evidence of managers' awareness of preparers' “stylizing” the file to suit the manager was weak, the evidence of managers' stylizing for the partners was pervasive, affecting both work done and documentation. Managers believed that good reviews emphasized key issues and risks rather than detail. Other new descriptive evidence on the nature of the review process is provided, including the purpose of the review process, how frequently surprises are found in the review process, and the qualities of good reviewers compared with poor reviewers. The implications of our model and our results for future research are outlined.

Auditing, Auditor judgement, Review process