Predicting monitoring failures using the HEXACO framework: The effects of honesty-humility and agreeableness

An auditor’s ability to manage conflict in the monitoring process plays a key role in determining the quality of an audit. Auditors who are not willing to communicate disagreement with monitored parties risk compromising professional standards of integrity, resulting in monitoring failures. Organizations and society increasingly recognize the need to improve monitoring quality, however little research has focused on identifying individuals who can be relied upon to disclose others’ financial infractions. In the present contribution, we examine whether two personality traits under the HEXACO framework—honesty-humility and agreeableness—predict decisions to flag misreporting by monitored parties. Although both honesty-humility and agreeableness are socially desirable characteristics associated with cooperative behavior, we suggest these traits will differentially predict decisions to disclose others’ misreporting. Across a simulated audit experiment (N = 260) and field survey (N = 201) of certified public accountants (CPAs), we find that auditors with higher levels of honesty-humility are most likely to value professional integrity in the monitoring process and to report others’ financial infractions. The same cannot be said for auditors with higher levels of agreeableness. Our results provide the first empirical investigation of the HEXACO framework in the audit setting and imply that screening for honesty-humility is likely to have a positive impact on monitoring quality.