Expertise in Auditing.

Abstract In order for the general area of expertise in auditing to advance, researchers need to better understand the tasks auditors perform, the type of knowledge required for each task, and the training and experience auditors get at performing. Given the length of an auditor's career, it might be difficult to study auditors from their debut with the firm to their retirement, but studying their first years might provide useful insights. Auditors do no get as much experience at performing audits as chess masters do at playing chess. More information on the nature of the experiences auditors have with various audit tasks will help identify those tasks where auditors might have a well developed task-specific schema and those where the schema is more general. Because each client has specific characteristics and each industry requires different domain knowledge, an important characteristic of an auditor's expertise may be the ability to transfer his or her expertise when working in a new domain. There is a need to determine what knowledge and skills transfer when the domain changes.