Workplace Mindfulness and its Effect on Audit Quality-Threatening Behavior

• In Event: Workpaper Reviews, Reviewers & Audit Quality

Abstract

The concept of mindfulness pertains to the fundamental activities of consciousness, consisting of attention and awareness. Academic interest in mindfulness has swelled in recent years and studies on mindfulness in workplace contexts are beginning to appear in the organizational and applied psychology literatures. This study examines staff auditors’ workplace mindfulness and its effect on premature sign-off behavior—a serious dysfunctional act that may go undetected through the review process given the nature of work performed by staff-level auditors. Using a sample of 120 staff auditors, we find that auditors who adopt the perspective of external financial statement users during an audit are more mindful in their work setting, and mindfulness is negatively related to premature sign-off. We also evaluate the effect of supervisor coaching on perspective taking using a natural experiment, finding that staff auditors who are coached by their supervisors to consider the perspective of external financial statement users are more likely to adopt the viewpoint of an external financial statement user during an audit. The results underscore the importance of external user perspective taking and mindfulness in reducing audit quality-threatening behavior, and indicate that supervisor coaching is an effective technique to enhance perspective taking among staff-level auditors.

Authors

• Nathan Hatch Cannon, Texas State University - San Marcos

• David Noel Herda, Texas State University

• Randall F Young, Texas State University