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This study examines the effect of independence threats and litigation risk on auditors' evaluation of information and subsequent reporting choices. Using a Web‐based experiment, I tracked auditors' information gathering and evaluation leading to a going‐concern reporting decision. Specifically, 48 audit managers assessed client survival likelihood, gathered additional information, and suggested audit report choices. I found that auditors facing high independence threats (fear of losing the client) evaluated information as more indicative of a surviving client and were more likely to suggest an unmodified audit report, consistent with client preferences. In contrast, auditors facing high litigation risk evaluated information as more indicative of a failing client and were more likely to suggest a modified audit report. In addition, the association between risk and report choice was fully mediated by final information evaluation. This suggests that it is unlikely that different reporting choices resulted from a conscious choice bias, but rather that motivated reasoning during evidence evaluation plays a key role in the effect of risk in auditor decision making.

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SUMMARY In this study, we examine the proposition that the auditor's going-concern modified opinion is a valuable risk communication to the equity market that results in a shift of the market's perception of financially distressed firms. Specifically, our analyses reveal that the market valuation is significantly altered from a focus on both the income statement and balance sheet to a balance sheet-only focus in the year a company receives a first-time going-concern modified opinion. These results hold even after controlling for several common measures of financial distress and when examining a larger control sample of distressed firms. We also document that the market devalues a company's inventory and places increased weight on cash, receivables, and long-term assets and liabilities as a result of the auditor's modification. This indicates that the going-concern modification provides incremental information specifically related to abandonment or adaptation risk. Our results provide evidence that the market interprets the going-concern modified audit opinion as an important communication of risk that results in a substantial shift in the structure of the market valuation for distressed firms. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources. JEL Classifications: M41.

Prior research on market reaction to going-concern modifications indicates that unanticipated modifications cause a negative market reaction, whereas anticipated modifications produce no similar reaction. This paper uses previously proposed measures of market expectations and a naive model—actual subsequent viability status—to assess market reaction to going-concern report recipients. Our results indicate that a naive measure of market expectations provides information to the market that is incremental to previously developed measures when using market reaction as an indication of changed expectations. Multiple regression analyses controlling for firm size, going-concern expectation, bankruptcy probability, changes in financial condition, default status, and delisting support our finding of differential abnormal returns based on subsequent viability, and indicate a need for improved models of market expectations.