Inattentional blindness and its relevance to teaching forensic accounting and auditing

Gary Kleinman and Asokan Anandarajan

Journal of Accounting Education, 2011, vol. 29, issue 1, 37-49

Abstract: Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is the phenomenon of not being able to see things that are actually there. This concept is not covered in traditional accounting classes in general and forensic accounting and auditing in particular. We discuss why forensic accountants and auditors should be aware of inattentional blindness and we show how it may impact the behavior of the individuals investigating and being investigated. We use a video to illustrate how this concept could be meaningfully incorporated into a teaching curriculum with a focus on forensic accounting and auditing. In particular, we provide illustrations of how this video could be used in forensic accounting and auditing classes to heighten student awareness of how “blind spots” could adversely affect the investigation process. We conclude by using the Leeson/Barings scandal (involving the fraud that brought down Barings bank) to illustrate how inattentional blindness can occur in a real-life fraud situation. We also provide additional material showing the relevance of inattentional blindness to the Madoff Ponzi scandal.

Keywords: Accounting fraud; Forensic accounting; Inattentional blindness; Cognitive biases; Perceptual biases (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0748575111000546
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joaced:v:29:y:2011:i:1:p:37-49

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaccedu.2011.08.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Accounting Education is currently edited by Natalie Tatiana Churyk

More articles in Journal of Accounting Education from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().