Professional Skepticism In Auditor

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Recommended: Auditor's apparent and acutal independence

ABSTRACT: The paper provides a framework that describes how audit evidence combines with auditor (knowledge, traits & training, and specialization) characteristics and external environment (includes client) characteristics (e.g., client complexity, incentives, and accountability to reviewers) to produce judgments that reflect professional skepticism (hereafter PS) in auditing. The framework also describes how, given a judgment that reflects some level of PS, the judgment combines with auditor (independence) characteristics and external environment (includes client) characteristics (e.g., corporate governance, and legal liabilities) to produce actions that reflect relatively more or less PS. The framework highlights that auditors’ and external's pre-existing characteristics all combine (and potentially trade off or interact) to affect the amount of PS in audit judgment and audit actions, and thereby audit outcome (e.g., the quality of auditor's opinion professional judgment and financial reporting).
Keywords: Professional Skepticism; Skeptical Judgment; Skeptical Action; Professional Judgment; Financial Reporting Quality; Going Concern Opinion; Discretionary Accruals.

I. INTRODUCTION
Professional skepticism is considered to be an …show more content…

This paper makes a distinct and incremental contribution to the literature through building upon the model of Nelson (2009) and the framework of Hurtt et al. (2013). The SF groups the factors of NELSON MODEL (Shown in Figure 1) and combines them with the characteristics of Hurtt et al. FRAMEWORK (Shown in Figure 2) into two main border subcategories: auditor characteristics, and environmental (& client)

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