An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Michaela Donle
University of Potsdam

Ulfert Gronewold
University of Potsdam

Abstract: The auditor’s error handling behavior may have a considerable impact on the results of an audit and the acceptance of the auditor’s recommendations. By an appropriate error handling strategy the auditor may influence the auditee’s willingness to cooperate. Psychological research revealed two different error handling strategies, which exert an important influence on individual and organizational learning. We adapted these strategies to the audit situation. The main goal of the present paper is to validate the error handling construct and to provide an exploratory insight into the auditor’s error handling behavior. 284 internal, external, and public sector auditors from Germany answered our questionnaire. Results showed that our questionnaire measures a separate construct that differs from related constructs and discriminates between individuals. Furthermore we found that error handling behavior differs significantly between internal, external, and public sector auditors.

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