The results of this study suggest that auditors’ precision assessments may not be well calibrated for relevant precision factors. Thus, auditors may benefit from additional guidance indicating the factors that should be considered for assessing the precision of analytical
procedures.  Furthermore, audit firms might want to consider integrating some of the findings of this study into future training sessions and/or decision aids that would assist auditors in improving their precision calibration. An insensitivity to important precision factors may lead to over-reliance on analytical procedures, negatively affecting audit effectiveness. Because the allowance for loan losses is an estimate, the results of this study provide insight into factors that could influence the potential effectiveness of audits of estimates. Understanding how auditors evaluate analytical procedure precision for estimates is particularly critical in that analytical procedures may be the only source of assurance for testing these accounts.

McDaniel, L.S. and L.E. Simmons. 2007. Auditors’ assessment and incorporation of expectation precision in evidential analytical procedures. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory 26(1): 1-18.

Based on the interviews and problems identified, the authors conjecture that potentially suboptimal auditing methods are being used to evaluate complex estimates which are an important and growing part of the financial statements. This may be negatively impacting audit quality. More specifically, auditors over-rely on management estimates because they lack the knowledge and incentives to behave otherwise. This possibility has direct consequences for auditor professional skepticism because increasing professional skepticism may be less effective unless auditors are also given the requisite knowledge to properly use it. These problems are reinforced by auditing standards and regulators which generally outline/criticize the current auditing methods without suggesting new or better ones.  

Griffith, E., J. Hammersley, and K. Kadous. 2015. Audits of Complex Estimates as Verification of Management Numbers: How Institutional Pressures Shape Practice. Contemporary Accounting Research 32 (3): 833-863.

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Incorporating Big Data into an audit poses several challenges. This article establishes how Big Data analytics satisfy requirements of audit evidence, namely that it is sufficient, reliable, and relevant. The authors bring up practical challenges (such as transferring information, privacy protection, and integration with traditional audit evidence) and provide suggestions for addressing them in incorporating Big Data into audit evidence. They also suggest that Big Data can complement tradition audit evidence at every level of audit evidence: financial statement, individual account, and audit objective.

Yoon, K., L. Hoogduin, and L. Zhang. 2015. Big data as complementary audit evidence. Accounting Horizons 29 (2): 431-438.

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The results have implications about situations in which others evaluate the auditor’s work after the fact, such as the audit review process or the examination of audit evidence by regulators, jurors, or judges. In such situations, decision makers need to evaluate the strength of previously gathered audit evidence, and to judge the extent to which the evidence supports a previously reached conclusion. Regarding the assessed sufficiency of audit evidence, the results suggest that evaluators of the auditor’s work could require larger sample sizes under sequential sampling than under fixed sampling, to support the same level of confidence in the auditor’s opinion. Although sequential sampling might in fact increase audit efficiency, the findings suggest that this benefit could be negated by subsequent unfavorable assessment of audit evidence from a sequential sampling plan.

For more information on this study, please contact Marietta Peytcheva.

Gillett, P. R., and M. Peytcheva. 2011. Differential evaluation of audit evidence from fixed versus sequential sampling. Behavioral Research in Accounting 23 (1): 65-85. 

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The study provides evidence that the format of the audit evidence (using the business model evidence versus using the chronological evidence) impacts the level of fraud risk assessment.  This indicates that using the business model provides an advantage in evaluating and assessing the potential risk of fraud.  The advantages of using both forms of evidence may enable auditors to determine the nature, timing and extent of procedures to corroborate management’s explanations for fluctuations beyond the context of fraud.  Therefore, the findings of this study have broader implications, as it can be applied to other audit procedures to ensure that auditors are obtaining sufficient evidence throughout the audit as well as for an assessment of fraud risk.


For more information on this study, please contact William F. Wright.
 

Wright, W.F., and L. Berger. 2011. Fraudulent Management Explanations and the Impact of Alternative Presentations of Client Business Evidence.   Auditing:  A Journal of Practice and Theory 30 (2): 153-171.

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