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Title: The Effects of Auditing Experience on Sensitivity to Ethical and Technical Issues

Authors: William E. Shafer; L. Jane Park

Addresses: Author address listing can be found in the "About the Authors" section at the end of the article.

Abstract: This research examines the effects of public accounting experience on the ability to recognize ethical and technical issues presented in an audit planning context. Auditing students, staff auditors, and audit seniors completed an experimental case that required them to identify issues and rate the perceived significance of each issue identified. As hypothesized, experienced auditors identified significantly more technical issues and significantly fewer ethical issues than did auditing students. In addition, experienced auditors identified significantly more issues that were considered administrative in nature. Various individual difference variables such as ethical ideology and gender were not predictive of performance on the experimental task. The results of this study suggest that, while public accounting experience enhances the ability to recognize technical auditing and accounting issues, it does not result in a similar improvement in ethical sensitivity. The findings also raise concerns about the ethical sensitivity of young professionals.

Keywords: Auditing experience; ethical issues; technical issues; ethical sensitivity; ethical ideology; accounting issues.

DOI: 10.1504/JBM.1997.141035

Journal of Business and Management, 1997 Vol.5 No.1, pp.9 - 34

Published online: 05 Sep 2024 *