SYNOPSIS We examine whether and how the addition of mandatory paragraphs that highlight Key/Critical audit matters (KAMs) in the auditor's report affects users' information acquisition process using eye-tracking technology. We experimentally manipulate the presence of KAMs, their number (one or three KAMs), and their format with the inclusion of an overview of audit procedures performed to address each KAM. We find that KAMs have attention directing impact, in that participants access KAM-related disclosures more rapidly and pay relatively more attention to them when KAMs are communicated in the auditor's report. However, when exposed to an auditor's report with several KAMs, participants devote less attention to the remaining parts of the financial statements. Depending on the relevance of the information for the decision task users are less attentive to, our results have direct policy implications as they underline the potential costs and benefits associated with KAMs.

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Organizations often provide workers with knowledge management systems to help them obtain knowledge they need. A significant constraint on the effectiveness of such systems is that they assume workers know what knowledge they need (they know what they don't know) when, in fact, they often do not know what knowledge they need (they don't know what they don't know). A way to overcome this problem is to use visual ontologies to help users learn relevant concepts and relationships in the knowledge domain, enabling them to search the knowledge base in a more educated manner. However, no guidelines exist for designing such ontologies. To fill this gap, we draw on theories of philosophical ontology and cognition to propose guidelines for designing visual ontologies for knowledge identification.We conducted three experiments to compare the effectiveness of guided ontologies, visual ontologies that followed our guidelines, to unguided ontologies, visual ontologies that violated our guidelines. We found that subjects performed considerably better with the guided ontologies, and that subjects could perceive the benefits of using guided ontologies, at least in some circumstances. On the basis of these results, we conclude that the way visual ontologies are presented makes a difference in knowledge identification and that theories of philosophical ontology and cognition can guide the construction of more effective visual representations. Furthermore, we propose that the principles we used to create the guided visual ontologies can be generalized for other cases where visual models are used to inform users about application domains.Keywords: Knowledge work, knowledge identification, visual ontologies, knowledge management system, ontology, cognition Introduction 1Organizations often provide knowledge workers with knowledge management systems (KMSs). Salespeople, for example, rely on KMSs to help them discover how to close sales with customers (Ko and Dennis 2011). Although knowledge resources are designed to make up for users' lack of knowledge, this very lack of knowledge may prevent users from knowing what to look for. The information retrieval literature has recognized a similar problem in information seeking. Belkin et al. (1982, p. 62) state that "in general the user is unable to specify precisely what is needed," a problem which Ford (2004) refers to as an "age-old paradox" (p. 772). Organizations could attempt to overcome this paradox in 1 Alan Dennis was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Hock Chuan Chan served as the associate editor.The appendices for this paper are located in the "Online Supplements" section of the MIS Quarterly's website (http://www.misq.org). MIS Quarterly Vol. 35 No. 4 pp. 883-908/December 2011 883 Bera et al./Designing Visual Ontologiesvarious ways. One approach is to provide an ontology-a description of concepts and their interrelationships in a domain-to help people understand the content available in their knowledge resources. An example by Heflin (2001) demonstrates this idea. Whe...

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