Using Field-Based Evidence to Understand the Antecedents to Auditors’ Skeptical Actions
基于六家审计公司600多名审计师的实地数据，发现审计师怀疑行动的关键前因包括公司专业导向、个人责任感、特质怀疑、动机和意图，其中意图受社会规范影响最大。
SUMMARY We provide field-based evidence on antecedents to auditors’ skeptical actions, with participants including over 600 auditors across all ranks from six audit firms. We evaluate the relative importance of situational, client, and individual auditor characteristics, along with measures of auditors’ cognitive processing in relation to their self-reports of skeptical actions on one of their own audits. We find that the most important antecedents are each audit firm’s overall professional orientation, auditors’ individual feelings of accountability, their trait skepticism, their motivation, and their intentions to behave skeptically. Auditors’ intentions are most influenced by social norms and less influenced by attitudes toward and self-efficacy about behaving skeptically. Other important antecedents include each audit firm’s quality control systems, certain individual auditors’ personality traits, their client-related industry expertise, and their audit knowledge. Our findings support various aspects of prior conceptual models and suggest ways in which audit firms can promote skeptical actions.