Auditors: their mindset and their decisions

In the behavioral economics literature it is demonstrated that people that base their decisions on analysis rather than on their intuition are more likely to act: patiently, without losing perspective of the actual topic, without their decisions getting biased by the confidence they have in their own intellectual faculties, independently, and consistent with what new evidence suggests. Jan Bouwens argues that it would be of great importance to study these dimensions for auditors as each of these charac teristics are related to what society expects of an auditor. Jan Bouwens suggests that auditors are studied in their day-to-day operations so that we can increase our understanding of the interplay between the mindset of the auditor and the working conditions auditors face. Data that allow for the design of these studies is now made available through the Foundation for Auditing Research.

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