Using Self-Justification to Improve Novice Auditors’ Performance in Brainstorming Meetings
研究了在团队头脑风暴前让新手审计师记录是否讨论某个欺诈风险因素的理由，发现这种自我辩护干预能提升他们识别高质量欺诈风险的数量，且不降低效率。
SYNOPSIS Auditing standards require auditors to perform at least one fraud brainstorming session during planning. We examine the effect of a justification intervention used in preparation for a group brainstorming meeting on a novice auditor’s contributions during a face-to-face brainstorming meeting. The justification intervention involves the novice auditor documenting the reasons to discuss or not discuss a fraud risk factor in an upcoming brainstorming session. We focus on novice auditors’ subsequent contributions in a fraud brainstorming session because of their increasing audit responsibilities and because they often possess information unknown to the entire audit team due to their interactions with the client. We find that the pre-brainstorming justification intervention improves novice auditors’ brainstorming effectiveness (defined as number of quality fraud risks identified) without decreasing auditor efficiency. The results contribute to the fraud brainstorming literature and are of interest to audit practitioners and regulators as they conduct and inspect fraud brainstorming sessions. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors upon request. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M48.