Ethical Decision Making Among Auditors in Indonesia: Examination on State Professional Skepticism and Auditor Independence

Abstract

Auditors’ ethical behavior has become a concern globally with the continued occurrence of financial scandals. As a result, regulators, researchers and other stakeholders are focusing on auditors’ ethical behaviour, auditor independence and professional skepticism. As there are limited studies on the issue, the purpose of this study was is to examine the influence of professional skepticism and independence on the ethical behaviour of Indonesian auditors based on Rest’s model within the context of certain material audit adjustments to be recorded by an audit client. This study was also intended to examine the mediation effect of state professional skepticism on the relationship between auditor’s independence threat and auditors’ ethical decision making. This study adopted the experiment approach by utilizing case scenarios. There were 121 auditors from the Big 10 firm in Indonesia as participants of this study. This study found that despite auditors not recognizing the ethical issues due to independence threat, they still can act ethically. Further, state professional skepticism did not affect ethical decision making of auditors. Keywords: ethical decision making, professional skepticism, auditor independence