The purpose of this paper is to generate and inform academic, practitioner, and regulatory discussion on means to promote perceived and actual audit committee effectiveness. As one potential method, we propose that the SEC initiate a CPE-driven certification program for audit committee members...

We report the results of a survey of 178 corporate responsibility officers designed to explore how accountants can add value to sustainability initiatives. Specifically, we examine how three areas of accounting expertise (risk identification and measurement, financial reporting, and independent...

Prior survey studies imply that time budgets create incentives for auditors to underreport time and that such incentives decrease time reporting accuracy. Our study, however, hypothesizes that incentivising time reporting provides a signal that time reports are important, which increases the...

We provide theory and experimental evidence that, in cases of undetected fraud, professional evaluators (i.e. experienced auditors) do not evaluate auditor performance any more favorably when the auditor more accurately assessed a heightened risk of fraud. This occurs despite professional...

I develop a framework that elucidates how the primary target of auditors’ professional skepticism – audit evidence or their own judgment and decision making – interacts with other factors to affect auditors’ professional judgments. As an initial test of the framework, I conduct an...

In cases of alleged audit failure, auditors can make general statements regarding the quality of their work, or other statements intended to decrease juror assessments of auditor negligence. In this study, we examine how the perceived credibility of these remedial defense tactics moderates their...

Individuals judge audit quality, in part, based on adverse outcome information. Assuming that individuals over-rely on outcomes, prior accounting research attempts to improve their judgments by reducing their reliance on outcome information. Logically, however, individuals could either over-rely...