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Author: Ruwan K.B. Adikaram
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accountants
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
I show that auditors experience cognitive dissonance when they fail to take appropriate professionally skeptical (hereafter PS) action in line with high PS judgment. I specifically show that cognitive dissonance leads auditors to revise their attitudes on low ranking audit actions upward and lower their risk assessments, consequently, lower overall professional skepticism. I also find that auditor cognitive dissonance leads to exaggerated ex-post auditor self-assessments professional skepticism. Professional skepticism is fundamental to performing an audit according to auditing standards and critical to audit quality. Extant research that investigates treatments to enhance professional skepticism predominantly treats both skeptical judgment and skeptical action as analogous outcomes of professional skepticism. If, however, there is a breakdown between PS judgment and PS action, the overall benefits of these treatments will be trivial. I show that cognitive dissonance due to the incongruence between PS judgments and PS actions leads to an unforeseeable corollary of lower overall professional skepticism. I also demonstrate a specific mechanism of how auditor incentives lead to lower professional skepticism, hence, lower audit quality. Both researchers and practitioners can benefit from this study by better understating the intricacies in the critical link between PS judgment and action. Additionally, I provide an empirical investigation of the components in Nelson's (2009) model of professional skepticism and extend the model to reflect the intricacies between PS judgment and PS action. I test my hypotheses via a three-group research design with attitude change as a proxy measure of cognitive dissonance.
Author: Ruwan K.B. Adikaram
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Accountants
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
I show that auditors experience cognitive dissonance when they fail to take appropriate professionally skeptical (hereafter PS) action in line with high PS judgment. I specifically show that cognitive dissonance leads auditors to revise their attitudes on low ranking audit actions upward and lower their risk assessments, consequently, lower overall professional skepticism. I also find that auditor cognitive dissonance leads to exaggerated ex-post auditor self-assessments professional skepticism. Professional skepticism is fundamental to performing an audit according to auditing standards and critical to audit quality. Extant research that investigates treatments to enhance professional skepticism predominantly treats both skeptical judgment and skeptical action as analogous outcomes of professional skepticism. If, however, there is a breakdown between PS judgment and PS action, the overall benefits of these treatments will be trivial. I show that cognitive dissonance due to the incongruence between PS judgments and PS actions leads to an unforeseeable corollary of lower overall professional skepticism. I also demonstrate a specific mechanism of how auditor incentives lead to lower professional skepticism, hence, lower audit quality. Both researchers and practitioners can benefit from this study by better understating the intricacies in the critical link between PS judgment and action. Additionally, I provide an empirical investigation of the components in Nelson's (2009) model of professional skepticism and extend the model to reflect the intricacies between PS judgment and PS action. I test my hypotheses via a three-group research design with attitude change as a proxy measure of cognitive dissonance.
Author: Kristina Yankova
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3658088710
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Kristina Yankova addresses the question of what role professional skepticism plays in the context of cognitive biases (the so-called information order effects) in auditor judgment. Professional skepticism is a fundamental concept in auditing. Despite its immense importance to audit practice and the voluminous literature on this issue, professional skepticism is a topic which still involves more questions than answers. The work provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the behavioral implications of professional skepticism in auditing.
Author: Kristina Yankova
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783658088729
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Kristina Yankova addresses the question of what role professional skepticism plays in the context of cognitive biases (the so-called information order effects) in auditor judgment. Professional skepticism is a fundamental concept in auditing. Despite its immense importance to audit practice and the voluminous literature on this issue, professional skepticism is a topic which still involves more questions than answers. The work provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the behavioral implications of professional skepticism in auditing. Contents Belief Revision and Information Order Effects Professional Skepticism Empirical Analysis Target Groups Researchers and students in the fields of accounting and auditing Practitioners in these areas The Author Dr. Kristina Yankova completed her doctoral studies under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Annette Köhler at the Chair of Accounting and Auditing at the Mercator School of Management, University of Duisburg-Essen.
Author: Carmen Olsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319498967
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 62
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Book Description
This book describes how auditors exercise different levels of professional skepticism and how they are exposed to different types of affective information on clients’ behavior. Based on the author’s empirical study of 56 auditors, it shows that auditors’ skepticism and affective reactions towards a client interact to influence their appraisal of valuation problems. It also suggests that the effects of auditors’ affective reactions on their skeptical judgments depend on the level of risk in the audit engagement.
Author: Marietta Peytcheva
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
The study examines the joint effects of two different types of state skepticism prompts, as well as the effect of the personality trait of professional skepticism, on auditor cognitive performance in a hypothesis-testing task. Seventy-eight audit students and 85 practicing auditors examine an audit case and determine the evidence needed to test the validity of a management's assertion in a Wason selection task (Wason 1966, 1968, 1969; Cosmides 1989). The 2x2 between-participants experiment manipulates the presence of a professional skepticism prompt and the presence of a cheater-detection prompt (Cosmides 1989; Cosmides and Tooby 2008a). The personality trait of professional skepticism is measured with Hurtt's (2010) scale. The presence of a professional skepticism prompt is found to improve cognitive performance in the sample of students, but not in the sample of auditors. The presence of a cheater-detection prompt has no significant effect on performance in the student or auditor sample. The personality trait of professional skepticism is a significant predictor of cognitive performance in the sample of students but not in the sample of auditors. These findings suggest that increasing the states of skepticism or suspicion toward the client firm's management may have no incremental effect on the normative hypothesis testing performance of experienced auditors, who are consistently exposed to the importance of being skeptical in the course of their work. However, actively encouraging skeptical mindsets in novice auditors is likely to improve their cognitive performance in hypothesis testing tasks.
Author: Carmen Olsen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This paper addresses how cognitive neuroscience can advance our understanding of auditor professional skepticism (hereafter, PS) in ways that traditional perspectives may not be able to do. Drawing on the literature from cognitive neuroscience and PS research, we identify the following PS research areas potentially improved with neuroscientific perspectives: trust, trait and state skepticism, theory, and deception/fraud detection. We propose research questions under each research area identified using a neuroscientific perspective to help examine and ultimately improve the PS level among auditors. The manuscript concludes by discussing the critical question of whether integrating a neuroscientific perspective into PS research is worthwhile and provides further direction for future research.
Author: Larry Mack Parker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Auditing
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
Author: Mintz
Publisher: McGraw Hill
ISBN: 0077185463
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 626
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Book Description
E-book: Ethical Obligations and Decision-Making in Accounting: Text and Cases
Author: J. Owen Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Auditing standards require auditors to maintain a skeptical mindset throughout an audit. However, research indicates that mindsets are flexible such that cognitive procedures (e.g., bolstering or providing counterarguments) activated when performing a particular task can carryover and influence subsequent task performance. We examine whether natural features within the audit environment, such as routine planning tasks, can create a mindset that influences evidence evaluation and skeptical judgments in a second, unrelated audit task. In an experiment, auditors who developed a counterarguing mindset during a planning meeting and subsequently evaluated internal control evidence potentially indicative of a significant deficiency (moderate severity) were more skeptical of management's explanation for the control deficiency and rated the deficiency more severe than auditors who initially developed a bolstering mindset. This effect diminished when the severity rose to potentially indicate a material weakness (high severity), as there were no differences in ICFR assessments between auditors who developed a counterarguing or a bolstering mindset. Path analyses confirm that the moderate severity condition processed client persuasive communications by utilizing a strategy consistent with previously developed mindsets which, in turn, influenced ICFR assessments. The high severity condition, instead, followed a content-focused processing strategy that focused on items indicative of increased risk which was invariant to the mindset condition. Thus, the flexibility of auditor mindsets can impact professional skepticism and have efficiency and effectiveness consequences under certain conditions. These results have implications for audit training and for improving regulators' understanding of why auditors do not always exhibit adequate skepticism.
Author: Christine J. Nolder
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Auditing
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
