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This article summarizes and outlines practical implications from the findings of ‘‘It Goes Without Saying: The Effects of Intrinsic Motivational Orientation, Leadership Emphasis of Intrinsic Goals, and Audit Issue Ambiguity on Speaking Up” (Kadous, Proell, Rich, and Zhou 2019). Through a series of experiments and surveys, the initial paper tests the effect that leadership focus on intrinsic motivation of auditors can have on their willingness to “speak up” with audit issues. Furthermore, they introduce the effects that ambiguity and source of motivation have on their initial findings. We expand this original work by summarizing the empirical findings and elaborating on the practical implications for auditors, managers, academics, and regulators. Applying these findings in practice could be a cost effective and efficient way to operationalize PCAOB AS 1201 and improve audit quality.

I examine how the subjectivity of task criteria influences auditors' ordering and performance of audit tasks under time pressure. Tasks with more objective criteria provide little flexibility in how well they can be completed (i.e., they are either performed correctly or incorrectly). On the other hand, tasks with more subjective criteria have a wider range of performance levels that satisfy the "letter" of the criteria, but not necessarily the "spirit." I predict and find that auditors tend to work on a task with more objective criteria before a task with more subjective criteria. As time pressure increases, auditors ordering their tasks this way reduce performance on the subjective task, but not the objective task. By decreasing performance on tasks with more subjective criteria, auditors can address all the criteria for both tasks if only in letter, rather than in spirit.