FAR Working Paper 2023/11 - 22: Practitioner Perspectives on Going Concern Opinion Research and Suggestions for Further Study: Part 1—Outcomes and Consequences
Auditing researchers rarely engage practicing auditors regarding the phenomena examined, or conclusions reached, in academic research. In an attempt to bridge this gap, we report on the outcomes, insights, and observations from focused interactions with Dutch audit practitioners regarding their perspectives on recent research regarding auditor going concern opinion (GCO) decisions. We provided practitioners with a summary of some of the most salient recent GCO research findings and the goals of our subsequent discussions were to (1) obtain practitioners’ responses to the research findings, and (2) identify relevant issues for future study from the perspective of practitioners. Accordingly, we report on our discussions with practitioners and provide a summary of practitioner-informed GCO-related future research topics. In this first of a two-part sequence, we provide background information relating to our practitioner interactions, and summarize our discussions pertaining to GCO outcomes and GCO consequences, as well as future research.
Authors
Marshall A. Geiger, Ph.D., CPA, is the CSX Chair in Management and Accounting and Professor of Accounting at the Robins School of Business, University of Richmond. Marshall has also been an honorary Professor of the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University in Australia. He graduated from Penn State University in 1988 with his Ph.D. in accounting and has published over 75 articles, a research monograph, and a Chapter in a research reference book on numerous topics in accounting, auditing and accounting education. Marshall has been recognized as the most prolific accounting scholar among all accounting Ph.Ds graduating worldwide in 1988. He is a past Editor at Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, and former Associate Editor at Accounting Horizons and holds appointments on five editorial review boards of scholarly journals in the US and internationally. Marshall has delivered over 60 educational and research seminars and programs on a broad range of topics in accounting and auditing to a wide range of participants, including audit practitioners, entrepreneurs, academics, lawyers and standard-setters.
Anna Gold is Professor of Auditing at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Adjunct Professor at Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). She earned her PhD at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are in the judgment and decision-making area, primarily applied to the field of auditing. Her research has focused on the impact of regulatory changes (e.g., fraud consultation, audit firm rotation, and auditor reporting standard changes) on judgments and decisions of auditors, preparers, and financial statement users. She has also examined how auditors and audit firms manage errors and whether varying the error management climate affects auditors’ error reporting willingness and learning. Her current work focuses on how auditors use specialist advice, the communication between auditors and audit committees, and auditors’ use of audit technology.
She has published her research in outlets such as The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Business Ethics, and International Journal of Auditing. Professor Gold currently serves as editor at The Accounting Review (2020-2023) and Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie (since 2018). She is a member of the editorial board of Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory.
Professor of Auditing at VU University Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam