Abstract Our purpose is to investigate the strategies an auditor will use to assess risk when planning for the provision of a type of assurance service. The assurance service that we model is the delivery of information from the auditor to an investor. Our primary objective is to explore the extent to which risk assessment strategies that are employed in the provision of traditional auditing services carry over to the assurance service that we model. We find that unlike audit services where conservatism can be the cure for the "auditor's curse," or a protection against legal liability, in assurance services that are user-driven there is a lesser role for conservatism as a universal property of the information system. We also find that auditors who supply assurance services (of the variety we model) will not compromise their reputation as high-quality auditors because assurance services will be provided at a high level of quality for economic reasons, even without regulator restrictions.
King et al. (Wed,) studied this question.