Auditors often seek both formal and informal advice from a variety of sources, including specialists (e.g., IT, valuation, tax, and/or forensic experts), national offices, and engagement team members. This literature note reviews six academic studies on auditors’ use of advice and its impact on their professional judgment and audit quality. Specialists provide critical expertise, yet prior research finds that auditors often limit expert involvement due to concerns about budgets, deadlines, and client relationships. Furthermore, misaligned perceptions and communication gaps between auditors and specialists reduce effective knowledge sharing and integration of expertise. The need to balance between professionalism and client service further adds to the complexity of the issue. The quality of auditor-specialist relationships and the strength of shared team identity can influence auditors’ reliance on specialist advice. Positive relationships facilitate integration and mutual understanding, while strained relationships can hinder audit effectiveness. However, a strong identity or social bond may create trust heuristics (i.e., auditors overly rely on the advice regardless of its quality). Excessive dependence on seeking explicit knowledge – knowledge that can be accessed more efficiently elsewhere – from colleagues can harm auditor reputation and performance.

This literature note provides insights into how auditors assess and respond to fraud risks. Overall, the evidence shows that fraud audit effectiveness depends not only on standards and technical guidance, but also on judgment structures, cognitive framing, team dynamics, and tone at the top. First, auditors often recognize heightened fraud risk but can fail to translate that recognition into targeted, effective audit responses. Instead, they frequently rely on increases in sample sizes rather than designing substantive procedures focused specifically on the fraud area. Encouragingly, identifying more fraud-focused risk factors may enable auditors to more effectively modify standard audit programs in response to fraud risks. Second, how fraud risk assessment is structured and framed significantly influences auditor judgments. Expanding the traditional fraud triangle to incorporate management capability leads to higher fraud risk assessments. Presenting fraud information in frequency formats rather than probabilities improves judgments when fraud base rates are low. Compared to using a holistic fraud assessment approach, decomposing the likelihood and magnitude assessments makes the low likelihood of fraud more salient and leads to lower fraud risk assessments. These findings suggest that judgment aids with respect to fraud must be carefully designed and evaluated. Third, audit team dynamics and leadership emphasis on professional skepticism play a critical role. Audit teams’ high-quality fraud brainstorming strengthens the relations between risk factors, risk assessments, and audit responses. Moreover, partner emphasis on professional skepticism improves both the effectiveness and efficiency of auditors’ fraud judgments. Collectively, the literature highlights that improving fraud risk assessments and responses requires a multifaceted effort. Audit firms should focus on strengthening auditor fraud cue recognition, promoting targeted responses, refining fraud risk assessment aids, improving brainstorming practices, and reinforcing a tone at the top that prioritizes professional skepticism and audit effectiveness.