The Effects of Multitasking on Auditors’ Judgment Quality

Abstract

Auditors must frequently multitask in order to complete their work efficiently. However, the potential impact of multitasking on auditors’ judgment quality is poorly understood. Using Ego Depletion Theory and a laboratory experiment, we predict and find that auditors become less able to identify seeded errors after multitasking, and that this effect is most prominent in the identification of conceptual, rather than mechanical, errors. These negative consequences of multitasking are mitigated when auditors are exposed to an intervention based on a theoretical countermeasure of replenishing depleted self‐control resources, in that multitasking auditors identify more seeded errors with the intervention than without. Given that multitasking is a pervasive feature of the current audit environment, these findings have direct implications for audit practice. Beyond identifying multitasking as a cause of impaired performance in auditing, this study's results provide initial evidence that such negative effects can be mitigated, resulting in improved audit quality and, by extension, improved financial statement quality.

Prepopulating Audit Workpapers with Prior Year Assessments: Default Option Effects on Risk Rating Accuracy

“…For example, the audit environment can be rife with factors that deplete self‐control resources, for example, multitasking, lack of sleep, and complex thinking (Schmeichel, Vohs, and Baumeister [], Lanaj, Johnson, and Barnes [], Buchheit et al. [], Mullis and Hatfield []). As another example, only about a quarter of our participants had experienced exclusively non‐prepopulated workpapers on their audit engagements.…”

Auditing Research: A Review of Recent Research Advances

“…Among the factor identified as affecting the audit quality are: major client loss or gain (Francis et al 2017a) information foraging (Commerford et al 2017); auditors reacting to immediately felt costs of information collection (e.g. time and effort); management preference for low audit quality (Kowaleski et al 2017); audit failures of individual auditors who also deliver lower-quality audits on other audit engagements (Li et al 2017); salient social ties between engagement auditors and audit committee members (He et al 2017) or alumni affiliations (Bhattacharjee and Brown, 2018); client affinity and client pressure (Koch and Salterio, 2017;Messier and Schmidt, 2018); multitasking (Mullis and Hatfield, 2018) or sticking to prepopulated work papers, fast working and superficial processing (Bonner et al 2018); longer audit firm tenure (Singer and Zhang, 2018).…”

Can multitasking influence professional scepticism?

“…Working on multiple tasks and multiple clients within a short period is a prevailing reality for audit professionals (Bhattacharjee et al , 2013; Westermann et al , 2015; Long and Basoglu, 2016; Mullis and Hatfield, 2018). Bhattacharjee et al (2007, 2013) note that the majority of uninterrupted work periods include work on two or more clients and argue that the complex multitasking audit environment may negatively affect audit professionals’ judgment.…”