The Effects of Fraud Signals, Evidence Order, and Group-Assisted Counsel on Independent Auditor Judgment.

Recently, the prevention, detection and reporting of fraud has drawn substantial attention. The Report of the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial Reporting [1987], the nine "expectation gap" Statements on Auditing Standards [AICPA, 1988], and ongoing Congressional hearings by Congressmen Dingell, Gonzalez and others focus attention on huge reported losses from alleged corporate fraud. Extension of group information-processing procedures in auditing has been suggested as a potential means to achieve higher quality audits. This paper reports the findings of an experimental study examining individual and group-assisted audit judgments of 99 Big 6 audit seniors under varying levels of fraud. In addition, the paper addresses the influence of group assistance on the recency order effect common to many audit studies. Group assistance was found to result in judgments with greater adherence to the guidance present in professional standards, whereas order effects were found to persist for auditors in the low, but not high, fraud condition.