Auditor Attendance to Negative and Positive Information: The Effect of Experience-Related Differences.

Abstract Prior audit judgment research indicates that auditors exhibit a preferential attendance to negative evidence in their decision making processes Kida, 1984; Trotman and Sng, 1989; Butt and Campbell, 1989; Anderson and Kida, 1990. This study examines whether experience-related differences play a role in this tendency to focus on negative data. Specifically, we investigate whether auditors with low levels of audit experience attend to more negative (and less positive) audit evidence than auditors with higher levels of experience, and whether less experienced auditors make more negative audit planning judgments than more experienced auditors. The study employs an analysis of variance design using three subject groups: audit seniors, staff auditors, and auditing students. The experimental task involves an evaluation of control risk in the sales/receivables area. The results indicate that experience plays a primary role in auditor attendance to negative audit evidence but does not affect attendance to positive information. Auditing students and staff auditors were found to attend to more negative evidence than audit seniors. This focus on negative data was further reflected in auditor control risk assessments in that auditing students rated control risk to be higher than audit seniors. The results indicate that the less experience auditors possess, the more they focus on negative information and the more negative they are in making audit judgments.