IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v55y2015i4p1015-1040.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The comparative effect of process and outcome accountability in enhancing professional scepticism

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Kim
  • Ken T. Trotman
  • Neil Fargher

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="acfi12084-abs-0001"> Responding to concerns about insufficient professional scepticism in audits (e.g. PCAOB, , ; ASIC, ), we investigate the effect of process and outcome accountability in enhancing the level of professional scepticism and the differences in effects across audit experience levels. In our experiment, we manipulate the type of accountability (outcome versus process) for both novice auditors and audit seniors. We examine the effect on four measures of professional scepticism and find that auditors show greater levels of professional scepticism when they are expected to justify their judgment process, rather than their final judgments. Our results also show that the professional scepticism of novice auditors improves to a greater extent than that of more experienced auditors (audit seniors) under process accountability.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Kim & Ken T. Trotman & Neil Fargher, 2015. "The comparative effect of process and outcome accountability in enhancing professional scepticism," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 55(4), pages 1015-1040, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:55:y:2015:i:4:p:1015-1040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/acfi.2015.55.issue-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dalla Via, Nicola & Perego, Paolo & van Rinsum, Marcel, 2019. "How accountability type influences information search processes and decision quality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 79-91.
    2. Mina Ličen & Sergeja Slapničar, 2022. "Can process accountability mitigate myopic biases? An experimental analysis," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 1-26, March.
    3. Maciej Ciołek & Izabela Emerling, 2019. "Can We Shape Trait Professional Skepticism through University Accounting Programs? Evidence from Polish University," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-30, January.
    4. Christopher J. Wolfe & Brant E. Christensen & Scott D. Vandervelde, 2020. "Intuition versus Analytical Thinking and Impairment Testing†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 1598-1621, September.
    5. Sammy Xiaoyan Ying & Chris Patel & Aeson Luiz Dela Cruz, 2023. "The influence of partners' known preferences on auditors' sceptical judgements: The moderating role of perceived social influence pressure," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(3), pages 3193-3215, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:55:y:2015:i:4:p:1015-1040. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaanzea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.