Empirical Evidence on Personality and Gender Differences in Auditors

• In Event: International Auditing

Abstract

We can speculate on whether the specific type of people who enter the auditing program have a certain type of personality or whether the specialized education makes these people into the desired type of personality for the auditing profession. We can agree that exploring the nuances of personality in the auditing students will help us at least to identify whether there are indeed personality differences (between auditors and those who are not auditors). This study uses the NEO Personality Inventory (“NEO PI-R”) to explore whether auditors’ personalities differ from those of the normative population and also to identify whether gender differences are found in auditors’ personalities. These questions are timely because the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (“IAASB”) consultation paper (IAASB January 2013) called for exploring auditors’ capabilities to help auditing firms in recruiting, evaluating, promoting, and remunerating partners and staff. Eighty-seven students participated in the personality assessment. Twenty-five students were students enrolled in a Masters program in business and administration. Sixty-two students were auditing students registered in the Masters program in accounting and auditing, preparing to become auditors. The main findings indicate that in general auditing students like social interactions and score high on the achievement striving facet as compared to the normative population. We also find auditing students scoring lower than average on the trust facet but the results are not significant. There are also significant findings on gender differences within auditing students on several facets, for instance on the Values facet. The study’s main contribution to research is in the use of a new method to measure auditors’ personality characteristics and to determine whether personality differences exist between male and female auditing students. Future research may use the instrument to measure auditors’ trait skepticism in order to complement Hurtt’s scale. In the future, a relationship between the study’s results on auditing students and the code of ethics will be established.

Author

• Cardamine Carmen Olsen, Norwegian School of Economics