An AICPA ethics ruling prohibits auditors from considering employment with a client during the audit engagement in order to minimize the concerns that financial statement users may have regarding the auditor's independence, in fact or appearance. The objective of this study is to examine auditors' reporting intentions when it is discovered that another auditor is considering employment with the client and has failed to comply with the ethics ruling. We test a model that predicts that auditors' reporting intentions will be influenced by their perceptions of the seriousness of the act, the personal costs of reporting, their responsibility for reporting, and their commitment to the accounting profession. The results indicate that auditors' reporting intentions are stronger when personal costs of reporting are perceived to be lower or personal responsibility for reporting is perceived to be higher. Implications of the findings for audit practice are discussed.

This study provides evidence on how auditors' use of decision aids affects jurors' evaluation of auditor legal liability, based on an experiment in which actual jurors responded to a hypothetical audit lawsuit. The results suggest that decision aids can have positive, negative, or neutral effects on auditors' legal liability, depending on how auditors use the decision aid and the reliability of the decision aid. For high-reliability aids, jurors attributed more responsibility for an audit failure to the auditor when the auditor overrode the recommendation of a decision aid than when the auditor did not use the decision aid. However, jurors attributed lower responsibility to an auditor who relied on the recommendation of a highly reliable decision aid, even though the aid turned out to be incorrect. In contrast to the high-reliability conditions, auditors' use of the decision aid had virtually no impact on jurors' liability judgments when the reliability of the decision aid was low.

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This study examines several factors that in~uence decision makers| willingness to rely on mechanical decision aids[ The _rst experiment examined the e}ects of predictive ability information and locus of control on decision aid reliance[ The results indicate that decision makers were more likely to rely on a decision aid when its predictive validity was not disclosed[ Further\ decision makers with an external locus of control relied more on the decision aid than those with an internal locus of control[ The second experiment expanded upon this result to examine the interactive e}ects of decision maker involvement and locus of control[ The results suggest that involving decision makers in the aid|s development enhanced reliance[ However\ decision makers with an internal locus of control were more strongly in~uenced by this form of involvement "in terms of increasing their reliance on the decision aid# than decision makers with an external locus of control[ Copyright Þ 1990 John Wiley + Sons\ Ltd[ KEY WORDS decision aid reliance^predictive validity^locus of control^involve! ment Judgment researchers have consistently shown that for a wide variety of tasks individuals| judgments tend to exhibit numerous biases and errors[ Further\ evidence suggests that statistical models generally outperform individual decision makers "Kleinmuntz\ 0889#[ Unlike unaided human judgment\ stat! istical models eliminate inconsistency and ensure that relevant information is used in decision making "Dawes\ 0868^Kleinmuntz\ 0889#[ These two _ndings have jointly suggested to researchers from a variety of judgment domains including business\ medicine and weather forecasting that statistical or mechanical models can be used to aid the decision making of individuals[ Unfortunately\ research suggests that individuals are often unwilling to rely on decision aids[ In summarizing this literature\ Davis and Kottemann "0884\ p[ 034# conclude that {Despite the broad e}ectiveness of decision rules\ decision makers have been notoriously reluctant to use them|[ Correspondence to] Stacey Whitecotton\ School of Accountancy\ Arizona State University\ Tempe\ AZ 74176!2595\ USA[ E!mail] Stacey[WhitecottonÝasu[edu

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