The Influence of Auditors' Justification Processes on Their Decisions: A Cognitive Model and Experimental Evidence

The Effect of Partner Communications of Fraud Likelihood and Skeptical Orientation on Auditors' Professional Skepticism

“…The above result is different from that reported in some previous social psychology and auditing research, which suggests that the partner giving their own view would result in a partner alignment effect (Tetlock 1983;Peecher 1996;Wilks 2002). One explanation is that when faced with multiple accountabilities (Bagley 2010), including regulators and inspectors who have warned of the need to maintain an appropriate level of professional skepticism, the influence of the partner's view may not be as pronounced, especially when that view may encourage a lower level of professional skepticism.…”

“…Research in accounting has supported this theory and shows that subordinates tend to agree with reviewers' and supervisors' views (Peecher 1996;Hoffman and Patton 1997;Turner 2001;Wilks 2002). Peecher (1996) finds that reviewer preferences affect both the level of skepticism in auditors' likelihood assessments and the weight auditors assign to client integrity when making such assessments. Such accountability effects are explained by Hoffman and Patton (1997) to be the result of auditors' tendency to shift their judgments based on what they expect to be defensible to their superiors.…”

“…We expect, therefore, that auditors will exhibit greater levels of professional skepticism toward management's view, rather than the partner's view, that there is a low likelihood of fraud. As elaborated upon below, two effects contribute to this expected difference in professional skepticism, that is, a partner alignment effect (Peecher 1996;Turner 2001;Wilks 2002) and a review perspective effect (Libby and Trotman 1993). As both the partner alignment and review perspective effects predict different mechanisms by which partner attribution impacts professional skepticism, we subsequently compare the partner view and management view conditions with a no view condition in order to investigate the contribution of the partner alignment and review perspective effects to the differences in professional skepticism.…”

“…Our theoretical development of this independent variable emphasizes that the partner attribution effect can result from either a partner alignment effect and/or a review perspective effect contributing to the differences in professional skepticism when the partner varies what is communicated to the audit team. A partner alignment effect proposes that, with knowledge of the partner's view, auditors will consciously and/or subconsciously align their judgments with that view (Peecher 1996;Turner 2001;Wilks 2002). A review perspective effect proposes that, with knowledge of management's view, auditors find themselves in a review mindset, which affects the processing of evidence that contradicts management's view (Libby and Trotman 1993).…”

Hubungan tekanan akuntabilitas, audit judgement performance, dan effort

“…Judgment sering dibutuhkan oleh auditor dalam melaksanakan audit atas laporan keuangan suatu entitas (Zulaikha 2006 (Peecher 1996) dan review (Tan dan Kao 1999;Tan et al 2002). Studi ini mendukung gagasan bahwa auditor dengan tekanan akuntabilitas tinggi akan memiliki audit judgment performance yang lebih baik.…”