The Next Best Thing: Social Presence and Accountability’s Impact on Auditor Professional Skepticism

• In Event: Break and Research & Education Poster Forum

Abstract

Professional skepticism has been one of the PCAOB’s primary concerns over the last decade, and this focus is likely to continue to be an area of focus and contention as audit fieldwork is shifting from the client site and is alternatively being performed from a remote environment. This change is likely to influence an auditor’s mindset by changing the nature, frequency, and duration of their interaction with the client. Using an experiment with experienced auditors from a Big 4 accounting firm, this study examines how the perceived level of social presence influences an auditor’s professional skepticism, how accountability influences professional skepticism, and, finally, how increased accountability can be used to increase auditor skepticism in a remote audit environment. Using Social Presence Theory (SPT), we predict and find that auditors who feel a greater degree of social presence with their client are more skeptical. We also find that increasing an auditor’s feelings of accountability can increase skepticism, and that increasing accountability in a low social presence environment can mitigate lower feelings of professional skepticism. Due to the increased use of remote audit environments and generational preferences for electronic communication, skeptical behavior may be unintentionally inhibited without purposeful safeguards to mitigate the impact of changing work environments.

Authors

• Katherine Brunelle Sorensen, University of Memphis

• Marc Ortegren, Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville