An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship between Professional Skepticism, Trust Level and Audit Skeptical Judgments and Decisions

Abstract

We used a survey to investigate whether accounting students’ trait professional skepticism, assessed by the Hurtt Professional Skepticism Scale (HPSS), relate to personality dimensions and facets, in particular their trust, as assessed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R1). We then investigated how levels of trait skepticism as measured by these two instruments (the HPSS and NEO PI-R) are associated with accounting students’ skeptical judgments and decisions. The results showed that auditors’ skeptical judgments (what they think they will do) were significantly associated with the students’ trait skepticism as assessed by HPSS, but was not associated with whether the student was generally suspicious or trustful of people as assessed by NEO PI-R. By contrast, HPSS trait skepticism did not contribute to an understanding of the students’ skeptical decision (what they actually do). This was more closely related to student’s reports on the NEO PI-R Trust facet. Taken together, our findings suggest that being highly skeptical may be beneficial to the audit decisions quality.