Auditing Complex Estimates: How Do Construal Level and Evidence Formatting Impact Auditors' Consideration of Inconsistent Evidence?

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is concerned about auditors' tendency to ignore relevant information that is inconsistent with management's assumptions underlying complex estimates. We find that priming auditors to consider how management arrived at a particular assumption helps curb aggressive reporting by encouraging auditors to engage in low‐level, concrete thinking regarding the direct evidence underlying the assumption. Low‐level, concrete thinking enhances auditors' sensitivity to relevant contradictory evidence. We also find that auditors reviewing graphical (versus textual) evidence are more skeptical of aggressive assumptions underlying a complex estimate. Evidence suggests that this is because graphs provide a better cognitive fit for tasks requiring comparisons and associations among data points. Our study is important to practitioners, regulators, and researchers as it sheds light on how a simple prime and the presentation format of audit evidence influence auditors' professional skepticism in this area. Additionally, it supports audit firms' initiatives to transform data to more visual formats by highlighting a context in which graphs improve auditors' judgments. Finally, we provide evidence as to how different primes affect auditors' evaluation of evidence, which can be useful in designing more effective audit plans.