AN INVESTIGATION OF THE HIERARCHICAL, SEQUENTIAL NATURE OF AUDIT WORKING PAPER REVIEW (WORKPAPER REVIEW, AUTOMATICITY)

This study examines the hierarchical nature of audit workpaper review by exploring the effects of experience and expertise on the accuracy of error detection in the review process. It also examines the sequential nature of audit workpaper review by investigating the potential benefits of limiting the focus of the reviewers at different stages of the review process. These areas are examined because workpaper review is an important, costly, but little studied part of the audit process.; The benefit of having workpapers reviewed at higher hierarchical levels is supported, in that auditors at higher levels were found to outperform those at lower levels in detection of conceptual errors. The benefit of specialization of review at sequential stages of the process is questioned in that instructing auditors, particularly managers, to narrow their focus to detection of one type of error appears to impair their performance. This may be due to automated cognitive processing which causes auditors to attend to and process all types of errors in the review process.