Impact of psychological safety and professional skepticism on private information sharing during SAS 99 brainstorming

This study investigates the joint effects of psychological safety and an intervention encouraging professional skepticism on auditors' comfort sharing private information during SAS 99 brainstorming. I predict audit staff and seniors become more comfortable sharing private information in more psychologically safe settings than less psychologically safe settings. I expect that an intervention encouraging professional skepticism helps audit staff and seniors overcome effects of less psychologically safe settings and become more comfortable sharing private information in these settings. Participants review case materials and watch a video of the brainstorming session for the case's client where I manipulate psychological safety and a professional skepticism intervention.;I find psychological safety positively impacts auditors' comfort sharing private information, suggesting psychological safety is important for brainstorming. I also find comfort sharing information relates positively to fraud risk assessments. Therefore, if auditors have key private information and are not comfortable sharing this information, brainstorming audit teams could make ineffective fraud risk assessments and audit planning decisions. However, I do not find support for the mediation hypotheses. While auditors' comfort sharing information relates to fraud risk assessments, it does not help explain the relation of psychological safety or a professional skepticism intervention with fraud risk assessments. Psychological safety does not appear to directly impact auditors' judgments regarding fraud risk factor relevance or fraud risk assessments. Further, the professional skepticism intervention does not appear to impact comfort sharing private information.;This research makes several contributions to SAS 99 brainstorming and fraud risk assessment literature. This study goes beyond existing SAS 99 brainstorming literature to consider comfort sharing private information as a dependent and mediating variable. This research also contributes to psychological safety literature by investigating psychological safety's impact on comfort sharing information in a controlled experimental setting, and to prior literature using hidden profiles by applying this design in a fraud risk brainstorming task with professional auditor participants.;Audit practitioners should be aware that comfort sharing private information during brainstorming can lead to more effective brainstorming and improve fraud risk assessments. Audit firms could easily train audit partners on methods to promote psychological safety and encourage information sharing.