Senior Manager Differences In Audit Workpaper Review Performance

The review of audit workpapers (review) is fundamental to auditing as a mechanism for controlling quality and monitoring appropriateness of work performed (Solomon [1987]). Trotman [1985] and Trotman and Yetton [1985] investigated whether review is a beneficial process and found that review reduces judgment variance (Trotman [1985]) and increases the accuracy of prereview judgments (Trotman and Yetton [1985]). However, when the studies compared teams consisting of an audit senior and an audit manager to teams consisting of two seniors they found no significant differences in performance. In both of the aforementioned studies, seniors were given audit tasks to perform, and after performing the tasks, the seniors formed interacting groups of two that arrived at new group judgments for the same task. The judgments of a subset of the seniors were then reviewed by managers who arrived at their own judgments.' When the studies compared the judgments of the audit managers to those of the teams consisting of