Abstract We survey public company executives and directors to understand what audit clients want from their auditor in today’s regulated environment. Our results provide at least three important takeaways. First, executives and directors view elements of auditors’ service quality (e.g., timeliness of communications) as at least as important as auditors’ technical competence. Second, we find no evidence that stakeholders’ preferences for service quality replaces their expectation for technical competence. Third, we find that 57% of executives and 67% of directors feel they can very accurately assess audit quality after an audit’s completion, but we are unable to identify clear determinants of participants’ self-reported ability to assess quality. Our results highlight the challenges facing auditors as they attempt to please clients, protect shareholders, and comply with regulations, all while offering a product whose quality is inherently challenging for others to assess. Our findings motivate future research and inform regulatory efforts.

ABSTRACT We examine the use of intuition versus analytical thinking in auditor risk assessment using a task that requires auditors to assess a group of impairment indicators. We expect that auditor intuition, rooted in the subconscious, more likely reacts to impairment indicator risk than does auditor analytical thinking. Results from two different experiments support this expectation for less‐experienced audit seniors. These seniors are more likely to assess step‐zero impairment indicators as signaling potential impairment when prompted to think intuitively versus analytically . In contrast, a third experiment finds that experienced seniors are more likely to assess step‐zero impairment indicators as signaling potential impairment when prompted to think analytically versus intuitively . This is consistent with the more experienced but still non‐expert seniors possessing developed analytical thinking, but struggling to effectively use their intuition. Our results inform theory by suggesting under what conditions auditor intuition and analytical thinking produce differential risk sensitivity. Furthermore, our results inform practice, given regulators' stated focus on auditor skepticism and impairment assessments.

ABSTRACT This study provides evidence that binary signals in audit reports are unable to fully communicate underlying risks that are inherently continuous in nature. Specifically, we find that companies whose audit reports signal an improvement in internal control effectiveness relative to the prior year are still more likely to subsequently restate the current year's financial statements than companies with no material weaknesses in either year. Similarly, companies deemed to no longer have substantial doubt of continuing as a going concern are still more likely to declare bankruptcy than companies with no going concern opinion in either year. Results in both settings suggest the presence of residual risk that cannot be communicated through a binary audit report, despite the fact that auditors recognize the risk, as evidenced by higher audit fees and longer audit report lags. Our findings are strongest when the reported improvement is more pronounced, and our results hold in matched samples. Our study provides empirical evidence that supports recent regulatory efforts to improve the content of the audit report and offers suggestions for future research.

ABSTRACT Using proprietary data from a global accounting firm, we investigate the determinants of auditors' interim effort as well as the impact of interim effort on audit quality, client disclosure timeliness, audit hours, and audit fees. Public statements from accounting firms and regulators suggest various benefits from accelerating auditor effort, but these claims remain largely untested. We find that interim effort is higher for large, complex clients that require integrated audits of both financial statements and internal control over financial reporting. With respect to consequences, we find that allocating relatively more work to the interim period is associated with a reduced likelihood of late 10‐K filings, decreased total audit hours, and higher fees. Although increasing interim period effort is not, on average, associated with a reduced likelihood of misstatement, we do find that current period material weaknesses are less likely with greater interim work. Thus, greater interim effort appears to facilitate the remediation of internal control deficiencies before year‐end. We also show that the benefits of increased interim period effort allocation are much stronger—including improved audit quality—when manager and partner interim involvement is high. Overall, our study provides important new insights on audit production and highlights benefits of reduced hours for auditors, earlier identification of control deficiencies for clients, and more timely financial reports for investors.

ABSTRACT We examine whether PCAOB inspection reports increase auditors' litigation risk. We find that inspection reports with audit deficiencies are positively associated with the number of lawsuits subsequently filed against the inspected auditor. These results are strongest when client-level lawsuit-triggering events have already occurred and when PCAOB inspection content is arguably more persuasive. Importantly, these results pertain exclusively to triennially inspected audit firms for which the set of other publicly available signals of audit quality is limited. Furthermore, we do not argue that inspection reports in isolation trigger lawsuits. Instead, once events such as restatement announcements or bankruptcies create the potential for legal action against the auditor, inspection reports provide a public signal about past noncompliance with auditing standards. This signal likely increases lawyers' perceived strength of case against the auditor before the lawsuit is filed and before lawyers have access to the audit workpapers.