The Development and Transferability of Task Knowledge

This study provides experimental evidence related to the management of audit task knowledge. Specifically, the research explores whether a certain type of task knowledge, loan credit review knowledge, develops differently for in‐charge auditors working in different industry specializations. Since auditors are often asked to choose an industry specialization at the in‐charge level, understanding whether certain industries provide the opportunity for differential knowledge development is important (Libby and Frederick 1990), especially if such knowledge can be transferred to aid performance in tasks completed in several other industries. As such, the study explores whether the task knowledge under investigation can be transferred across both industry and task contexts to aid performance in the going concern judgment, a task that is required to be completed in all industries. An experiment was administered to 60 in‐charge auditors from one of the then Big 6 firms, with 32 participants specializing in the fin...

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