Mitigating Auditor Bias Through Elaboration

ABSTRACT Numerical anchoring and conformity to a known view are two prominent biases exhibited by auditors. While both influence auditors’ judgments and reduce decision quality, research has not explored a common source: their creation by a superior to whom one is accountable. It is unclear how these biases interact and how they can be mitigated. We use three experiments to examine how accountability and experience influence numerical anchoring in auditors’ risk assessments with a known perspective. We also test an intervention to reduce auditors’ anchoring and conformity. In Experiment 1, we investigate the impact of a manager‐provided anchor on experienced and inexperienced auditors, finding both are susceptible to conforming to the manager's numerical perspective. However, inexperienced auditors are more vulnerable to this bias. In Experiment 2, we increase thoughtfulness in inexperienced auditors by having them perform a risk factor evaluation before their client‐specific risk assessments. Such intervention helped inexperienced auditors generate risk assessments that were more consistent with those of experienced auditors under accountability. In our final experiment, we demonstrate that primed thoughtfulness and reduced accountability helped inexperienced auditors reach judgments consistent with experienced auditors in a control group with no known views.