Professional skepticism through audit praxis: An Aristotelian perspective

Abstract

While professional skepticism (PS) is a critical element of audit practice, academic and professional discourse offers unclear and sometimes competing narratives of how to maintain or improve it. This study provides a holistic account of how PS develops by interpreting interviews of 21 highly experienced auditors. Using a theoretical framework from Aristotle and Alasdair MacIntyre, PS is interpreted as a character virtue of skepticism guided by the intellectual virtue of phrónēsis. PS is developed through two distinct stages of auditors' careers: (i) the pre‐professional phase, in which an auditor acquires characteristics amenable to developing PS; and (ii) the professional praxis phase, in which PS is inculcated through a combination of formal and on‐the‐job instruction and audit experience. This approach to how PS is developed suggests that audit firms could focus more explicitly on recruiting novice auditors whose pre‐professional characteristics make them receptive to acquiring PS, and on blended learning, with formal and on‐the job instruction and habituation through audit experience.