Can Auditors Improve Their Judgment by Drawing on the Crowd Within?

Posted: 14 Nov 2021

See all articles by Aaron F. Zimbelman

Aaron F. Zimbelman

University of South Carolina - Department of Accounting

Date Written: November 4, 2021

Abstract

This study examines whether auditors can improve their judgment by drawing on the crowd within—that is, making the same judgment twice and averaging the two responses. Improvements in judgment are of special interest to auditors given that poor judgment threatens audit effectiveness and efficiency. The results from my experiment suggest that drawing on the crowd within helps auditors better use their task-relevant knowledge, leading to more accurate auditor judgments relative to the judgments of an expert panel. Also, auditors can employ different task-relevant knowledge that leads to more justifiable judgments when they are prompted (vs. not prompted) to make a limited, intuitive initial judgment as they draw on the crowd within. Overall, auditors appear to increase their task-relevant knowledge as they develop expertise but do not appear to better use that knowledge absent intervention. Auditors can manipulate how they draw on the crowd within to achieve different audit objectives—for example, accuracy versus justifiability.

Keywords: auditor judgment, crowd within, auditor knowledge, industry specialization, decision aid

Suggested Citation

Zimbelman, Aaron F., Can Auditors Improve Their Judgment by Drawing on the Crowd Within? (November 4, 2021). Contemporary Accounting Research, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3961536

Aaron F. Zimbelman (Contact Author)

University of South Carolina - Department of Accounting ( email )

Darla Moore School of Business
1014 Greene Street
Columbia, SC 29208
United States

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