The results of this study are especially important for auditors, suggesting that clients’ incentives and ingratiation of the auditor can influence audit decisions.  Client incentives influence auditor judgment by affecting client credibility. Client ingratiation towards the auditor can influence auditor judgment by inducing positive affect toward the client, which can increase the likelihood auditors will comply with client requests (thus affecting audit quality). Finally, the results show that student participants were less trusting of the client than audit professional participants. This finding is consistent with prior accounting research that shows that as auditors gain more experience, they are less skeptical.

Robertson, J.C. 2010 The effects of ingratiation and client incentive on auditor judgment. Behavioral Research in Accounting 22 (2): 69-86.

Ingratiation is a strategic influence tactic through which the ingratiator attempts to induce positive affect, which in turn influences judgments such that the target is more likely to comply with the ingratiator’s request. (“Affect” is a broad term encompassing positive and negative valuations and moods.) This study examines how ingratiation affects auditor judgment. In addition, this study examines whether the aforementioned relationship is sensitive to differences in the client’s incentive to influence the auditor. Specifically, this paper examines the following: 

• Integration. Psychology research shows that ingratiation is applicable to many settings in the corporate environment and is generally a successful influence tactic when seeking compliance with both implicit and explicit requests.
• Client Incentive and Credibility. Clients’ incentives can have a negative impact on the success of using ingratiation on others, by leading the target(s) to question the credibility of the ingratiator. Source credibility theory indicates sources perceived to be of high credibility are more persuasive than those perceived to be of low credibility. Therefore, the credibility of the ingratiator contributes to the success of ingratiation as an influence tactic.

Participants included both audit practitioners and graduate accounting majors and data was collected in the early 2000s. Participants were provided background information about a hypothetical audit client and a description of the assigned client incentive level (either low or high, based on the absence or presence of financial incentives to meet EPS targets to earn bonuses). Next, participants
performed an audit task that required them to determine the likelihood that they would recommend an adjusting journal entry to write down the inventory. In this stage, the CFO either ingratiated or did not ingratiate the auditor. The final stages of the experiment included participants’ assessment of their affect toward the CFO and a measure of the participants’ level of professional skepticism.

• Auditors felt stronger positive affect toward the ingratiating client than the non-ingratiating client; however, ingratiation did not affect auditor judgments.
• Auditors are more likely to propose adjustments when the client has high incentive to influence the auditor than when the client has low incentive.
• When the client ingratiates the auditor, the auditor will be less likely to propose an audit adjustment when the client has low incentives, compared to when the client has high incentives.
• Auditors experience stronger positive affect toward clients with low incentive than clients with high incentive.
• Results indicate that graduate students were less likely to comply with client requests than professionals at least in part because of higher professional skepticism than professionals.