SUMMARY Both researchers (e.g., Nelson 2009) and regulators (e.g., the PCAOB) have emphasized the importance of exercising the appropriate level of professional skepticism when conducting an audit. However, professional skepticism remains a hard concept to define and measure. In addition, it is often difficult to determine if a lack of skepticism is the primary cause of audit deficiencies and if so, what factors led to the lack of skepticism. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) extend the work of Nelson (2009) by synthesizing research related to auditors' professional skepticism to identify antecedents to both skeptical judgment and skeptical action, (2) identify areas where research is lacking on a particular dimension and suggest avenues for future research, and (3) discuss the implications of research findings for regulators and auditing professionals. We adopt two foundational aspects of the framework introduced in the seminal paper by Nelson (2009), which proposes that lack of skepticism can either be the result of a failure in problem recognition (lack of skeptical judgment) or a failure to act on a problem recognized (lack of skeptical action). We organize research studies into four categories of antecedents: studies relating to auditor characteristics, evidence characteristics, client characteristics, and environmental characteristics. We find that while research studies provide insights into both the antecedents to skeptical judgments and actions, the majority of research efforts to date have focused on the antecedents to skeptical judgments and on auditor characteristics in particular. Research findings have implications for practice, but in order to understand how skeptical judgment translates into skeptical action, additional research on skeptical action will need to be conducted.

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We investigate how auditors learn the technical aspects of their professional role while performing client engagements, and how that learning process has been shaped by changes in societal, economic, and regulatory forces. Prior studies explicitly recognize that auditors need social skills and demeanor consistent with professional norms as well as requisite knowledge, but those studies generally focus on the processes through which new auditors are molded toward consistency with social norms. In contrast, we focus on forces affecting the transfer of technical knowledge from supervisor (guide) to subordinate (learner) in the everyday work setting. Our evidence derives from semi‐structured interviews with 30 relatively new and more experienced audit partners at one Big 4 firm, thus spanning multiple “generations” of experience. Results confirm that auditors primarily acquire technical knowledge on the job, through the interactions among individual engagement team members. However, partners express concern about changes in the practice environment that may limit effectiveness of on‐the‐job learning, including characteristics of personnel, the approach to formal training at induction, supervisors' reluctance to provide candid feedback, regulatory and economic pressures, and the increased distraction, and reduced interpersonal contact associated with the use of information technology. At the end of the day, our findings raise implications for practice regarding the difficulty of developing effective learning conditions for auditors in the face of these challenges.