Can audit committee support improve auditors’ application of professional skepticism?

Despite the recognized importance of professional skepticism, auditors’ failure to consistently exercise a sufficient level of professional skepticism continues to be a globally recognized issue. In this study, we seek to gain a better understanding of the role audit committees, who oversee the audit process and can help/aid in improving auditors’ application of skepticism. In a survey of audit practitioners, we found that: audit committee support varies substantially between audit engagements; audit committee support is multifaceted; and the support is often not conveyed to the lower-level members of the engagement team. Given our survey findings, we experimentally investigated whether and how audit committee support being explicitly conveyed to the entire engagement team (by either the partner or audit committee chair) impacts the skeptical judgments and actions of auditors.

We find that an expression of audit committee support conveyed explicitly by the audit partner can increase the skeptical actions of auditors, whereas such an expression of support by the audit committee chair does not. Our findings point to the crucial role audit partners can play in improving auditors’ application of professional skepticism.