Good Judgement

Issues in audit world: professional skepticism, judgement

Making good judgements: not intuitive
o Our brains programmed to make snap judgements based on little evidence, which isnt
helpful in audit
Longer firms: sophisticated strategies for overcoming unconscious biases and promote sound
processes for making judgements
Micro-entity: audit team is often one person
o Can be a challenge to overcome threats of interest bias in making judgements
Factors that auditors may not be conscious
o Power of first impressions
o Taking easy route
o Believing what we are told
o Believing what we want to
o Influence of the initial position
Large firms safeguards include
o Using formal decision making frameworks
o Engaging external experts where necessary
o Becoming aware of uncovering bias in auditor judgement at every level
Micro-entity auditors
o Management often not knowledgeable about accounting, which makes initial
identification of issues more difficult
o Second guessing ones own judgement is hard
o Implementing formal/rigid judgment processes not conducive to effective micro-entity
engagement where flexibility is essential
Process to reduce unconscious bias
1. Clearly state the issue
2. Document which stakeholders will be affected by judgment
3. Determine possible outcomes and whether they differ for various stakeholder
4. Evaluate process management has gone through to develop issue, wheat evidence
provided, what youre done to verify it
5. Obtain evidence from other sources, evaluate its qualify
6. Whether consultation with someone else its quality
7. Document your conclusion and impact on your audit