The Effects of an Audit Partner’s Communication Medium and Use of Worked Examples on Auditors’ Skeptical Judgments and Actions

ABSTRACT Regulators have expressed concerns that auditors do not exercise sufficient professional skepticism (PS), a critical component of audit quality. We conduct a 2 × 2 between-participants experiment with 81 graduate students proxying as staff auditors to examine if the audit partner’s communication medium (video or email) used to emphasize PS and the provision of worked examples to illustrate how to apply PS (present or absent) affect auditors’ skeptical judgments and actions. We draw on theories of communication and education research on worked examples to develop our hypotheses. We find an interaction such that using video communication combined with worked examples leads to higher skeptical judgments and actions than the other cells. Our study contributes to theory and academic literature by linking theories of communication with worked examples, introducing worked examples to the accounting literature, and highlighting the importance of communication media in the application of PS.