IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibf/acttax/v14y2022i1p57-74.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Professional Skepticism: Standardsetters’ Responsiveness To Stakeholder Comment Letters

Author

Listed:
  • Arianna Spina Pinello
  • Ara Volkan
  • Mark Arnone
  • Jamie Lancellot
  • Lana Luckey

Abstract

Auditing standards direct auditors to exercise professional skepticism (PS) in all facets of an audit. However, until the 2020 revisions to both US and global auditing standards were issued, there were no clear definitions of or guidance on how PS can be demonstrated and documented. How to exercise PS was left to the individual auditor to decide. Ironically, the same regulatory bodies often criticized and, occasionally, took punitive action against auditors, citing a lack of PS. To close this expectation gap, both the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) issued proposals to define, demonstrate, and appropriately apply PS. This paper provides an overview of both proposals, analyzes comment letters submitted by constituents at the exposure draft stage of the due process, and describes how and to what extent constituent input impacted the final standards issued in 2020. The results suggest that constituents generally supported both proposals. While the AICPA and IESBA incorporated some of the constituent input in their final standards, several major stakeholder recommendations were ignored. Stakeholder feedback overwhelmingly suggests that added guidance for the proper application of PS is needed, along with education and training programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Arianna Spina Pinello & Ara Volkan & Mark Arnone & Jamie Lancellot & Lana Luckey, 2022. "Professional Skepticism: Standardsetters’ Responsiveness To Stakeholder Comment Letters," Accounting & Taxation, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 14(1), pages 57-74.
    • Handle: RePEc:ibf:acttax:v:14:y:2022:i:1:p:57-74
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.theibfr2.com/RePEc/ibf/acttax/at-v14n1-2022/AT-V14N1-2022-5.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nolder, Christine J. & Kadous, Kathryn, 2018. "Grounding the professional skepticism construct in mindset and attitude theory: A way forward," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-14.
    2. Thomas C. Omer & Nathan Y. Sharp & Dechun Wang, 2018. "The Impact of Religion on the Going Concern Reporting Decisions of Local Audit Offices," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(4), pages 811-831, June.
    3. Helen L. Brown-Liburd, 2017. "Discussion of “Encouraging Professional Skepticism in the Industry Specialization Era”," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 257-258, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aaron Saiewitz & Elaine (Ying) Wang, 2020. "Using Cultural Mindsets to Reduce Cross‐National Auditor Judgment Differences," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 1854-1881, September.
    2. Ervin L. Black & F. Greg Burton & Joshua K. Cieslewicz, 2022. "Improving Ethics: Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior to Include Moral Disengagement," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(4), pages 945-978, December.
    3. Kathryn Kadous & Yuepin (Daniel) Zhou, 2019. "How Does Intrinsic Motivation Improve Auditor Judgment in Complex Audit Tasks?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(1), pages 108-131, March.
    4. Dela Cruz, Aeson Luiz & Patel, Chris & Ying, Sammy & Pan, Peipei, 2020. "The relevance of professional skepticism to finance professionals’ Socially Responsible Investing decisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    5. Mehdi Khodakarami & Hassan Yazdifar & Alireza Faraji Khaledi & Saeed Bagheri Kheirabadi & Amin Sarlak, 2024. "The Level of Islamic Religiosity of the Local Community and Corporate Environmental Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence from Iran," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 190(2), pages 483-512, March.
    6. Peipei Pan & Chris Patel, 2024. "Do Internal Auditors Make Consistent Ethical Judgments in English and Chinese in Reporting Wrongdoing?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 194(2), pages 433-453, October.
    7. Yingwen Deng & Yongliang Wu & Changli Zeng & Min Zhang, 2024. "The impact of Confucianism on auditor judgment," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1-2), pages 398-430, January.
    8. Hsieh, Wen-Liang G. & Wu, Wei-Shao & Tu, Anthony H., 2022. "Religiosity and sovereign credit quality," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 84-103.
    9. Beau, Pauline & Jerman, Lambert, 2022. "Bonding forged in “auditing hell”: The emotional qualities of Big Four auditors," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    10. Shahid, Ahmad Usman & Patel, Chris & Pan, Peipei, 2022. "Corporate social responsibility, intrinsic religiosity, and investment decisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    11. Greg Richins & Ken T. Trotman & Di Yang, 2024. "The effects of prevalence induced concept change on audit scepticism judgements," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 4429-4446, December.
    12. Nazia Adeel & Chris Patel & Nonna Martinov-Bennie & Sammy Xiaoyan Ying, 2022. "Islamic Religiosity and Auditors’ Judgements: Evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 551-572, August.
    13. Jessen L. Hobson & Matthew T. Stern & Aaron F. Zimbelman, 2020. "The Benefit of Mean Auditors: The Influence of Social Interaction and the Dark Triad on Unjustified Auditor Trust," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 1217-1247, June.
    14. Yi (Dale) Fu & Noel Harding & David C. Hay & Mohammad Jahanzeb Khan & Tom Scott & Harj Singh & Sarka Stepankova & Nigar Sultana, 2023. "Comments of the AFAANZ Auditing and Assurance Standards Committee on Proposed International Standard on Auditing 500 (Revised) Audit Evidence," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(4), pages 4805-4812, December.
    15. Kanellos S. Toudas & Jinxiu Zhu, 2023. "The Effect of Religion in European Financial Statement Disclosures: A Real Earnings’ Management Case," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-24, October.
    16. Murat Ocak & Bekir Emre Kurtulmuş & Emrah Arıoğlu, 2024. "Do Individual Auditors from More Religious Hometowns Enhance Audit Quality? Evidence from an Islamic Country," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 190(2), pages 439-481, March.
    17. Saeid Homayoun & Vahid Molla Imeny & Mahdi Salehi & Mahdi Moradi & Simon Norton, 2022. "Which Is More Concerning for Accounting Professionals-Personal Risk or Professional Risk?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-13, November.
    18. Ahsan, A.F.M. Mainul & Bose, Sudipta & Ali, Muhammad Jahangir, 2024. "Does Islamic religiosity influence professional accountants' judgments? Evidence from global convergence of IFRS," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Yu Chen & Xiaoyan Chu & Jung Chul Park & Jared S. Soileau, 2022. "CEO religious university affiliation and financial reporting quality," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(1), pages 417-468, March.
    20. Chambers, Valerie A. & Reckers, Philip M.J. & Reinstein, Alan, 2020. "Drivers of juror's malpractice assessments in auditor litigation involving offshoring and overtime: Generation and a management Mindset," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    IESBA; AICPA; Professional Skepticism; Audit Engagements; Audit Standards;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M42 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Auditing

    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:ibf:acttax:v:14:y:2022:i:1:p:57-74. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Mercedes Jalbert The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Mercedes Jalbert to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.