Reducing Management’s Influence on Auditors’ Judgments: An Experimental Investigation of SOX 404 Assessments

Abstract

Auditors often receive summary information or conclusions from management about account balances or internal controls. They must then gather evidence to assess whether this information is fairly stated. In such situations, management can be considered the “first mover” and the auditor the “second mover.” When auditors are the second mover, they are vulnerable to the curse of knowledge bias—the inability to ignore previously processed information (Fischhoff 1977). Specifically, because information from management could be incorrect or biased, auditors must arrive at an independent evaluation of the item in question (e.g., year-end book values, accounting estimates, or internal controls). This study examines the general issue of auditors being “second movers” by investigating how their awareness of management’s severity classifications of internal control problems influences auditors’ initial assessments of internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) under Auditing Standard No. 2. Our experimental design allows us to determine that management’s “first mover” influence on auditors’ judgments is an unintentional cognitive effect, rather than an intentional use of management’s classifications. We further examine whether cognitively restructuring the ICFR assessment task reduces management’s influence on auditors’ judgments by asking auditors to evaluate and explicitly document the likelihood and magnitude of the effect of an ICFR problem on the financial statements. We find that cognitively restructuring the task mitigates management’s “first mover” influence on auditors’ judgments.