Cognitive Style and Personality in Fraud Detection: Experimental Study on Government Internal Auditors

Abstract

This study aims to examine the perception of responsibility for detecting fraud in government internal auditors. This research is important to know the intrinsic factor of the auditor in his responsibility to detect fraud. These factors are the cognitive style and personality of the auditor. Personality is the novelty of this research based on the triangle model of responsibility. This study used an experimental design on 75 internal auditors of the South Sumatra provincial government. The results of this study are expected to be useful for scientific development in the field of accounting, especially public sector auditing. The results showed that the internal auditor with the field independent cognitive style had a higher level of perceived responsibility than the field dependent style in detecting fraud. Meanwhile, either a tolerant or intolerant of ambiguity of personality does not show a significant difference in detecting fraud for auditors. The benefit of the research results is that it can increase the preference for internal auditors in increasing competence in the task of detecting fraud.