One Hundred Years of Disappointed Expectations: A Quantitative Content Analysis of the Auditor's Responsibility to Discover Fraud Traced Through Montgomery's Auditing, 1912-1998

Abstract

We use the authoritative Montgomery’s Auditing reference series from 1912 to 1998 as a proxy for the U.S. auditing profession’s stance towards fraud detection as an audit goal and its attention to the implementation of this goal. A quantitative content analysis of the editions finds that the amount of text expressing a position on the auditor’s fraud detection responsibility, whether affirmative, negative, or ambivalent, was very high in the early 20th century, low from 1916-1975, and high in the last decades. In contrast, text explaining how to detect fraud lagged the three positions variables (affirmation, denial, ambivalence). How-to text was voluminous until mid-century, plummeted after 1949, and stayed low thereafter despite the appearance of new standards acknowledging fraud detection as a goal and despite the series’ stated support of the new standards.