Experiential Learning: Preparation for Compliance Auditing and Traditional Auditing

• In Event: Emerging Research Session II: Case Discussions and Communication

Abstract

In an experiential learning case, accounting graduate students reviewed attorneys’ expense reimbursement requests and assessed compliance with a judge’s guidelines. A comparison of students’ answers to pre-test and post-test questionnaires suggests that students’ engagement in the project effectively improved their knowledge of compliance auditing. In addition, survey results suggest that exposing students to compliance auditing in a non-financial statement audit context may enhance students’ traditional (i.e., financial statement) audit skills such as using monetary unit sampling to determine sample size and select items for testing and using ACL to extrapolate a sample error to a population. Auditing professors may consider a similar intervention for upper-level undergraduate students or masters of accounting students.

Author

• Kate Jelinek, University of Rhode Island