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

Elizabeth A Payne
University of Mississippi

Robert J Ramsay
University of Kentucky

E. Michael Bamber
University of Georgia

Abstract: Audit workpaper review is a primary means of quality control. To increase the efficiency of this costly process, reviewers can perform face-to-face, real-time reviews (a.k.a. review-by-interview (Rich, et al. 1997a). While prior research shows that the anticipation of a review can affect preparer judgments, there is little research on different review formats that occur in practice (Brazel et al. 2004). We compare anticipation of a real-time review-by-interview to more traditional written review notes from the reviewer. Path analysis finds that review-by-interview leads auditors to focus more on the cognitively demanding conclusion-oriented audit procedures. This, in turn, leads to higher performance in uncovering exceptions indicative of fraud. We find no evidence that anticipation of the interview causes auditors to perform less comprehensive work in expectation that they will be able to rely on impression management during the interview to achieve a satisfactory review.

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