Risk attitude and fraud detection: A Malaysian case

Fraud is an important issue in many countries such as in the United States, United Kingdom, including of Malaysia. Malaysian Approved Auditing Standards, AI 240 “Fraud and Error” was established to provide guidance on the auditor’s responsibility to consider fraud and error during the audit of financial statements. The auditors are required to appropriately assess fraud risk during the planning of the audit work so that they can provide reasonable assurance that any material misstatement in the financial statements has been detected. If the external auditors are not able to detect fraud, this may expose them to litigation. The present study aims to examine whether risk attitude has an effect on the external auditors’ ability to detect the likelihood of fraud. An experimental approach is adopted by sending case materials to audit partners and audit managers attached to auditing firms operating in Malaysia. The result shows that means difference exists on the ability to detect the likelihood of fraud between the external auditors who are risk averse and those who are risk taker.