Enhancing Auditor Responses to PCAOB Inspection Feedback

SUMMARY In this article, we provide a practitioner summary of the paper “Auditor perceptions, reactions, and responses to PCAOB inspection feedback” (Tegeler, Brown, and Downey 2025a) which finds that when auditors perceive the feedback source (inspectors), message, and their firm’s support more positively, they react with more satisfaction and motivation to use inspection feedback. These positive reactions in turn enhance auditors’ desirability to improve audit quality and inspection risk, result in more job satisfaction, and less turnover intent. In contrast, less positive reactions lead to more impression management (i.e., managing inspection risk in excess of audit quality). We summarize key findings and discuss practical implications to enhance audit practitioners’ inspection interactions and processes.