Are evaluations of audit quality influenced by management's intentions and outcomes?

Karim Jamal, Hanwen Chen and Le Luo

Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, 2015, vol. 22, issue 2, 191-212

Abstract: One major regulatory device for improving audit quality is to require auditors to assess the 'Tone at the Top' (that is, the integrity and especially top management's intentions and attitude towards earnings management), but prior audit research suggests that auditors are quite poor at assessing the knowledge, preferences and intentions of others. In this study, we report results of two experiments in which a material misstatement occurs intentionally (fraud) or inadvertently (error). Shareholders suffer a loss (or no adverse consequence). Experienced auditors (Certified Public Accountants [CPAs]) and a control group of university students assess the appropriateness of the auditor's conduct and specify a penalty. Experiment 1 results show that CPAs are not influenced by management's intentions or outcomes. Students are responsive to outcomes but not to management's intentions. In Experiment 2, we re-ran Experiment 1 using a within-subjects design to make management's intentions more salient. Experiment 2 results indicate that, this time, both CPAs and students respond to intention but in a manner opposite of that prescribed by professional standards. Students also respond to outcomes, though CPAs do not.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/16081625.2014.928988

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Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics is currently edited by Yin-Wong Cheung, Hong Hwang, Jeong-Bon Kim, Shu-Hsing Li and Suresh Radhakrishnan

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