You Catch More Flies with Honey: An Examination of Techniques to Mitigate Client Reactions to Increased Professional Skepticism

SUMMARY Professional skepticism (PS) is essential to audit quality but can harm auditor-client relations. We rely on Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) to predict that clients negatively react to higher than expected PS. We also examine whether auditors can use various impression management strategies to mitigate these detrimental outcomes. Experimental results indicate that higher than expected PS creates negative affect toward the auditor, which in turn reduces client cooperation and harms auditor-client relations. Furthermore, auditors’ use of ingratiation reduces the negative affect resulting from higher than expected PS and helps auditors maintain client cooperation (using two measures of client evidence provision) and client relations. Of particular importance, results indicate increased PS does not improve evidence collection unless the auditor actively alleviates client negative affect caused by increased PS. Thus, auditors’ use of ingratiation may improve perceptions of client service and lead to increased audit quality, rendering the application of PS more effective. Data Availability: Please contact the authors. JEL Classification: M42.