FARview #14 with Sebastian Kuhn

4 March 2021

Kuhn sheds some more light on the two ‘work packages’ that are part of the project. The first package is ‘understanding the relevance of internal control quality for audit quality’. The second package is about ‘identifying financial analysts as an information channel that may allow auditors to assess internal control quality more accurately and efficiently’.

Particularly, the second work package is innovative. The general notion is that financial analysts are highly interested in internal control quality, because that directly affects firm operations, which in turn influence future performance. This is an incentive for the analysts to gain as much information on internal control quality during the analyst meetings. Previous research shows that analysts possess superior information concerning the influence of external determinants (like macro-economic factors) on firm performance, and their internal control quality. In their FAR research project, Kuhn and his team members study how the analyst knowledge concerning ‘asking the right questions’ can help auditors in assessing fraud risks, for example by developing a ‘dictionary’. Listen to learn more!