This study has implications for public accounting firms engaging in GHG engagements. Team training that establishes an understanding of the knowledge and role of the team members from differing disciplines might help to alleviate over-reliance on peer-provided evidence. In the context of multidisciplinary assurance teams, establishing and adhering to audit firm quality control mechanisms relating to evidence collection, evaluation, and review are of particular importance. Accounting firms may also need to pay particular attention in fostering an assurance environment that encourages objective evidence processing.

 Kim, S., W. J. Green, and K. M. Johnstone. 2016. Biased Evidence Processing by Multidisciplinary Greenhouse Gas Assurance Teams. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 35 (3): 119-139.

Due to the increased attention being paid to the environment as well as how humans are impacting the environment, there exists growing demand for a range of corporate social responsibility information. In order to be most efficient, assurors conduct greenhouse gas (GHG) assurance engagements using multidisciplinary teams containing varying technical expertise, with some possessing financial audit-related expertise and others possessing science or combined science/financial-related expertise. The purpose of this study is to investigate how auditors respond to the discipline-specific expertise of other team members in undertaking GHG assurance. 

The authors test this by conducting an experiment in which traditional auditor participants respond to a simulated multidisciplinary team and examine whether the auditors bias their weighting of evidence based on if the senior assuror has a science background as opposed to a financial background. 

• The authors find that the assuror participants bias their processing of audit evidence by conforming to the science senior’s explanation, despite the fact that, in this setting, no science-related expertise is needed to compile or evaluate the evidence and other available evidence items contradict the science senior’s explanation.
• The authors find that the results also support the mitigating role of the reviewer’s expertise on the effect of the science senior’s explanation. Specifically, the participants who learned the explanation of a science senior place less weight on the science-related evidence items once they learn that the reviewer has financial assurance expertise.
• The authors also find evidence that this biased weighting of evidence and the mitigating role of the reviewer’s expertise translate into the final assurance judgments.

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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.

Complex estimates are increasingly important to financial statements and of growing concern to both regulators and investors. While auditors have well-established procedures for auditing more objective account balances (i.e., valued at historical cost), little is known about the process auditors use to evaluate more subjective, complex estimates. This article conducts interviews with experienced audit personnel to determine how auditors evaluate such estimates, determines the problems with such approaches, and uses “institutional theory” to theorize the reason such problems exist and persist. The authors consider the influence of both audit firms themselves and regulators (i.e., information from PCAOB inspection reports) on auditors’ complex estimate audit procedures.

The authors conducted semi-structured phone interviews with experienced audit personnel. Participants are from 6 large accounting firms with at least manager level experience. Interviews were conducted between October and November 2010. The authors analyzed the audit process steps discussed by participants for complex estimates and coded these steps according to the PCAOB auditing standards related to accounting estimates (AU 342 and 328).  For steps that could not be appropriately classified into ones discussed by the auditing standards, the authors developed additional classifications.

While auditing standards allow for different approaches to evaluating complex estimates (e.g., testing management process, preparing independent estimate, etc.), the authors find that auditors usually just test management’s process (i.e., verifying inputs such as historical cost, understanding who and how estimate is generated, testing controls surrounding process, and testing sensitivity of assumptions used).  

Based on institutional theory, the authors theorize two key reasons that auditors mainly use management process verification when auditing complex estimates instead of other (potentially more creative and skeptical) approaches. The reasons are:

• Both audit firm policies and professional standards generally emphasize management process verification techniques over other potential techniques. Additionally, regulators (i.e., PCAOB) reinforce/encourage this behavior because inspection findings largely focus on problems with auditing management’s process instead of suggesting alternative, superior auditing methods.
• Audit firms employ valuation specialists who have the necessary knowledge to more critically analyze complex estimates. This fact means that financial statement auditors generally do not have the necessary knowledge to critically analyze management’s models or develop an independent expectation. When auditors do use such specialists, they over-rely on their work.
• Given the lack of guidance regarding complex estimates, firms tend to use practices that have been previously legitimized. For auditing of complex estimates, verification (which works well to audit less subjective accounts) is used to audit more subject complex estimates. Auditing standards also mainly emphasize verification.
• Given inspection pressures, firms find it safer and more legitimate to mimic each other’s policies and procedures for auditing complex estimates instead of develop new ones.

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Involving two service providers, rather than one, conveys potential benefits similar to those argued for joint audits. Auditor independence is enhanced because each firm provides a reciprocal check on the diligence of the other, and the allocation of fees between providers reduces economic bonding between the client and any one firm. Regulators might consider requiring disclosure of the recipient of NAS payments for both the audit firm and other consultants to allow a more complete examination of the influence of NAS on audit quality in other settings.

Gaver, J. J., and J.S. Paterson. 2014. The Association between Actuarial Services and Audit Quality. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory 33 (1): 139-159.

A challenge facing the accounting profession is the creation and maintenance of auditor independence from clients, both in fact and in appearance. The authors examine the association between non-audit services and audit quality among firms in the property-casualty insurance industry. Limiting the sample to insurance firms conveys benefits that provide a more powerful test of the audit quality-NAS relation than has been possible in prior studies. This setting allows the authors to focus on a specific non-audit service that is purchased by almost all firms in the industry. The insurance setting is unique because the non-audit service that the authors examine is purchased by all firms in the sample, and they can identify both the audit and non-audit service provider. This allows the authors to directly address the NAS separation issue while holding NAS quality constant.

Since 1990, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has required a "Statement of Actuarial Opinion" regarding the adequacy of the company's loss reserve to be submitted with the insurer's Annual Statement. Although auditing standards and SOX both prohibit the audit firm from determining insurance company policy reserves (the audit client must use its own actuaries or third-party actuaries to provide management with primary actuarial capabilities), it is acceptable for actuaries from the audit firm to review and certify reserves established by the client and to sign the Statement of Actuarial Opinion. The loss reserve is the largest liability on insurer balance sheets, and establishing comfort on reserve levels is a crucial aspect of an insurance company audit.

The sample consists of 3,261 insurer-year observations where both audit and actuarial services are provided by a Big N firm. The sample was derived from a property-casualty database of the NAIC during the years 1993 through 2006. In 2,977 cases, the services are obtained from the same Big N firm; in the remaining 284 cases, one Big N firm conducts the audit and a different Big N firm certifies the reserves.

The authors find that when actuarial work is obtained only from Big N firms (NAS quality is constant), audit quality is higher when separate Big N firms provide audit and actuarial services. The implication is that separating audit and NAS functions between two quality providers is beneficial, compared to allowing one quality firm to provide both services.

The results indicate that joint provision of services is related to significantly more over-reserving by healthy insurers, compared to the case where audit and actuarial services are obtained from two independent firms. Although over-reserving by financially secure insurance clients does not present the same risk of audit failure as does under-reserving by weak insurers, both findings suggest that reserves are more likely to be biased in the client's favor when multiple services are consolidated in one provider. Specifically, jointly provided audit and actuarial services are associated with a greater tendency for weak insurers to under-reserve and strong insurers to over-reserve.

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Although both auditors and fraud specialists added non-standard procedures to the audit program, auditors cut the budgets for some standard procedures, making room in the overall audit budget for non-standard additional procedures. In contrast, fraud specialists added standard procedures, but they were not more effective than those selected by auditors, and also provided less budget room for those procedures. The involvement of fraud specialists in planning an audit engagement where fraud risk is present is likely to lead to additional audit effort and cost, possibly without commensurate benefit. However, considering the potential consequences to the auditor of undiscovered fraud, it may be cost-effective to include additional non-standard procedures in an audit program if they improve the probability of discovering a fraud.

Boritz, J. E., Kochetova-Kozloski, N., & Robinson, L. 2015. Are Fraud Specialists Relatively More Effective than Auditors at Modifying Audit Programs in the Presence of Fraud Risk? Accounting Review 90 (3): 881-915.

Since the passage of Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 99 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, policy-makers and regulators have promulgated additional guidance aimed at improving auditors’ performance in assessing and responding to fraud risks of audit clients. Auditors are expected to address fraud risk through the design of their audit methods and programs and by involving specialists. The authors study whether fraud specialists are relatively more effective than auditors in designing an audit program that will address elevated fraud risk. The goal is to examine whether the expertise of fraud specialists can directly contribute to planning the nature and extent of audit procedures, and whether the mix of procedures that such specialists recommend is likely to be more effective and efficient than the procedures proposed by auditors in a setting where ex ante fraud risk is rated at above a low level. By directly examining fraud specialists’ recommendations for an audit plan under conditions of an elevated fraud risk, the authors seek to clarify whether there are benefits in requesting fraud specialists to participate in audit program design.

Participants completed an audit case based on an actual company that had issued fraudulent financial statements. Thirty-two fraud specialists and sixteen auditors completed the case  On average, the fraud specialists were 41 years old, had 12 years of specialized fraud-related experience, and six years of auditing experience. The auditors were, on average, 36 years old, had 13.25 years of auditing experience, but no specialized fraud experience. The evidence was gathered prior to November 2010.

• In a situation with elevated fraud risk, fraud specialists did not select more procedures from a standard audit program than financial statement auditors; nor were the selected procedures more effective than those selected by auditors. This suggests that the benefits of involving fraud specialists in audit planning do not lie in their ability to identify more effective standard audit procedures.
• When the risk of fraud is other than low, the fraud specialists proposed more additional procedures than did auditors, and the specialist-proposed additional procedures were marginally more effective, but significantly less efficient, than the additional procedures proposed by auditors. This suggests that involving fraud specialists in audit planning can carry benefits for engagements where fraud risk is not low by helping to identify a larger set of effective procedures than even very experienced auditors are able to do.
• Fraud specialists increased time budgets to reflect the additional effort that they proposed via extensive non-standard procedures. However, although they proposed significantly more additional procedures than did auditors, their proposed time budget increases for those procedures were significantly lower than adjustments proposed by the auditors. 

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