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SUMMARY Analytical procedures require that auditors develop and test hypotheses about possible fluctuations in a firm's financial data. Research in psychology suggests that the initial information ambiguity that exists prior to hypothesis generation may affect not only the initial hypothesis set, but also final judgment accuracy. We argue in this paper that information ambiguity can be caused by two primary variables, data sufficiency and data complexity, and examine how these variables affect judgment accuracy during analytical review. Ninety-four staff auditors completed analytical procedures for a company with an error seeded into its financial statements. Information ambiguity was varied across three levels by manipulating both the sufficiency and complexity of the data (insufficient/complex, sufficient/complex, and sufficient/not complex). Participants generated hypotheses that might explain the observed fluctuations in the data, then received a comprehensive financial data set (that was identical for all groups) and were asked to identify the cause of the fluctuations. The results indicate that when auditors are initially exposed to more ambiguous information (either due to its insufficiency or complexity), they are less likely to ultimately identify the error causing the fluctuations, even though they have access to the same unambiguous information set prior to making their final judgments. Implications of these results for audit research and practice are discussed. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

We explore potential effects of a new Public Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) rule that requires disclosure of the external audit partner's identity. By manipulating the presence or absence of audit partner disclosure (APD), we examine how investors might react to APD and the mechanism behind such reaction. We find that prospective investors are less likely to invest in a peer firm linked to a restating firm via APD than when the link is only through an audit firm and industry. This effect is mediated by investors' restatement likelihood assessments. Our study makes several contributions. First, we add empirical evidence to the emerging debate on the impact of APD to U.S. markets. Second, we experimentally demonstrate investor information contagion and provide support for one mechanism (speculated by archival-based literature) through which it works. Finally, we provide evidence that investors attribute more blame to partners for a negative outcome due to APD. JEL Classifications: M42; M48.

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An important aspect of an organization's tone at the top is its practices for correcting the behavior of employees who deviate from set corporate policies and procedures (COSO 2013). Collectively, these practices are often referred to as an organization's error-management climate (EMC). We investigate whether a client's EMC can lead to behaviors that could reduce audit quality. We conduct an experiment and find that when a client's EMC is error averse (i.e., where employees are sanctioned for committing errors), external auditors indicate that client employees' errors discovered by the auditor are less likely to be reported. In addition, we examine the joint impact of the nature of the auditor-client relationship and EMC on auditor reporting. We find perceptions of reporting likelihood to be lower when the auditor is described as having a positive interpersonal relationship with the client employee responsible for the error. In addition, we find that this factor interacts with client EMC so as to exacerbate the observed reluctance to report when the climate is error averse. Our results provide initial evidence to suggest that an organization's EMC may impact auditor behaviors that could lead to reduced audit quality. Data Availability: Upon request.