（2005）Fraud risk assessments and auditors’ professional skepticism.pdfVIP

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at /researchregister /0268-6902.htm Fraud risk assessments and Fraud risk assessments auditors’ professional skepticism Elizabeth A. Payne Williams College of Business, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and 321 Robert J. Ramsay Von Allmen School of Accountancy, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA Abstract Purpose – To examine whether planning-stage fraud risk assessments and audit experience affect the level of professional skepticism displayed by auditors during fieldwork. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an experiment using professional auditors. Findings – Overall, auditors predisposed to low fraud risk assessments were less skeptical than those with no knowledge of fraud risk (control group). Also, as expected, auditors in the control group were less skeptical than those predisposed to moderate/high fraud risk assessments. Staff auditors were more skeptical than seniors. Senior auditors showed no differences in skepticism between the control group and high fraud risk assessment group. Research limitations/implications – Professional skepticism in this study is measured as the auditors’ assessment of client truthfulness. There is reasonable disagreement on the exact meaning of professional skepticism and some readers’ interpretation of the term may be different from the authors’ own. Practical implications – The results sugg