Audit category knowledge as a precondition to learning from experience

Abstract

Prior research indicates that inexperienced auditors lack knowledge of basic auditing categories (e.g. transaction cycles, audit objectives), instead developing this knowledge over time. As a consequence, learning from early experiences may be hampered because these experiences are not stored with respect to the category structures that are needed for important audit decisions. We performed an experiment which demonstrates that: 1. (1) providing transaction cycle and audit objective category knowledge through instruction prior to experience facilitates one particular type of subsequent learning from experience learning of category-level error frequencies), and 2. (2) this learning advantage cannot be duplicated by providing listings and explanations of category memberships after experience. In addition, actual experience consequently has a greater influence on later audit decisions when category knowledge is acquired prior to experience.