In this study we conduct an experiment to examine how qualifying an income‐decreasing accounting change in years of strong financial performance affects financial report users' assessments of strategic reporting, current financial performance, and future financial performance (performance over the next three years). We find that without the qualification, users viewed the income‐decreasing accounting change as relatively nonstrategic and that user assessments of current and future performance were not different. In the presence of the qualification, users believed that the accounting change was relatively strategic, and they discounted the income effect of the accounting change. We find further that their assessments of future performance were below their assessments of current performance but no different from the assessments of future performance in the absence of the qualification. Although our findings suggest that audit qualifications encourage users to be skeptical of income‐decreasing accounting changes, we find no evidence that they impose negative consequences on management in terms of lower assessments of financial performance.

In this study we report the results of an experiment that examines how relatively sophisticated financial statement users interpret management stock option compensation disclosures under SFAS No. 123 and SFAS No. 123R. We predict and find that mandated income statement recognition, as required under SFAS No. 123R, leads to higher user assessments of reliability than either voluntary income statement recognition or voluntary footnote disclosure, options allowed under SFAS No. 123. Users view voluntary footnote disclosure as the least reliable reporting alternative. We also examine the amount users invest in response to these accounting treatments, and find that users invest more in a firm when management chooses income statement recognition than when management chooses footnote disclosure. We find no difference in investment amounts between mandated recognition and either voluntary recognition or footnote disclosure. Finally, although we find that these results are insensitive to whether management explicitly disavows the reliability of stock option expense, we present evidence that, in side-by-side comparisons, where one firm disavows and the other does not, disavowals may affect user judgments and decisions.