The Effects of Interruption on Audit Efficiency and Effectiveness

• In Event: Accounting Behavior and Organizations II

Abstract

This paper examined the effects of interruption on auditor efficiency and effectiveness for two tasks within the audit domain. Accounting professionals are frequently interrupted, and task interruption has been shown to reduce efficiency and effectiveness in the human factors, information systems, and psychology literature. Given the importance of efficiency and effectiveness in the audit context, it is important to determine the extent to which the results of prior research can be generalized to the audit context, which differs from prior experimental contexts along a number of important dimensions. We find that auditors who are interrupted while performing an internal control evaluation task were less effective than uninterrupted auditors. Specifically, the interrupted auditors identified a higher number of non-existent internal control weaknesses. Regarding efficiency, interrupted auditors performing a ratio analysis actually completed the task faster (approximately two minutes) than the uninterrupted auditors with no significant difference in accuracy. Our results contribute to the extant literature by documenting that task interruption does affect performance in the audit context. Furthermore, they provide initial evidence that impact of task interruption depends on the type of task (concrete vs. abstract), and that interruption can actually improve performance on abstract tasks.

Authors

• James H. Long, Auburn University

• Guy Matthew McClain, Auburn University

• DeWayne L. Searcy, Auburn University