Abstract ABSTRACT: This paper reports an empirical study of 281 errors requiring financial statement adjustments on 152 audits. It reports, among other things, the audit areas in which the errors occurred, the audit procedure, circumstance or other event that initially signaled that an error had occurred, and the apparent causes of the errors, including whether they appeared to have been caused intentionally or unintentionally. The results suggest that client personnel problems, such as inexperience and insufficient knowledge of accounting, and cut-off or accrual problems, are important causes of errors. The results also suggest that analytical review procedures and discussions with the client signal a large proportion of errors. Various other results are presented, and some potential implications for audit planning are discussed.
Hylas et al. (Fri,) studied this question.