Expert Judgment In Audit Program Planning

Independent auditors collect, weight, and combine information in formulating an opinion about the fairness of their clients' financial statements. Auditors exercise professional judgment in determining the type and extent of information to collect and in assessing the implications of this information. The exact constitution of professional judgment is unknown but is certainly influenced by lengthy formal education and prior job experience. Because precise guidelines for information collection and evaluation in auditing do not exist, individual professional judgment plays an extremely important and pervasive role in auditing (Mautz [1959]). Since individual professional judgment is generally conceded to be very important in auditing, it should be the subject of a commensurate amount of systematic research. The several empirical studies that have been conducted (some of which are reviewed below) have generally reported substantial differences among the judgments made by individual auditors who served as subjects in the research. If auditors are, in fact, idiosyncratic in collecting, weighting, and/or combining information, then the validity of their judgments may be questioned, and research into the nature and costs of such differences may be in order.

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