برانگیختن مزایای شک و تردید: اثر مشترک سهام اجتماعی مشتری و حسابرس و ارزیابی تردید ها در اصلاحات حسابرسی Prompting the Benefit of the Doubt: The Joint Effect of Auditor-Client Social Bonds and Measurement Uncertainty on Audit Adjustments

1. Introduction When audit evidence is inconsistent with reported values, auditors have discretion over the amount of adjustment to require. Separate streams of research have found that auditors require smaller adjustments when social ties threaten independence (e.g., Bamber and Iyer [2007], Bauer [2015]) or when the amount of adjustment is characterized by uncertainty (e.g., Wright and Wright [1997], Libby and Kinney [2000], Braun [2001]) or imprecision (e.g., Griffin [2014]). We design an incentivized experiment to link these themes. Our key finding is that friendly, social interactions between reporters and auditors influence the adjustments our auditor-participants require only when the amount of misstatement is estimated, not when it is known with certainty. The link between auditor-client social bonds and measurement uncertainty is important because the effect of each construct is likely to depend on the other. In particular, our study suggests that social bonds alone are insufficient to impair auditor independence. That is, although stronger social bonds between participants in the auditor and reporter roles decrease the extent of misreporting in our experiment, they do not influence audit adjustments when the amount of misstatement is known with certainty. When the amount of misstatement is estimated, however, the same social bonds result in smaller audit adjustments, even after controlling for lower levels of misreporting. From the perspective of measurement uncertainty, our findings add a social dimension to the technical challenges often associated with auditing complex estimates (e.g., Bratten, Gaynor, McDaniel, Montague, and Sierra [2013], PCAOB [2014], Griffith, Hammersley, and Kadous [2015a], Griffith, Hammersley, Kadous, and Young [2015b], Glover, Taylor, and Wu [2017]). Specifically, our study suggests that even seemingly innocuous social interactions between auditors and clients can lead auditors to interpret uncertainty in the client’s favor. While prior studies show that measurement uncertainty or subjectivity can lead auditors to be more lenient (e.g., Wright and Wright [1997], Libby and Kinney [2000], Braun [2001]), our results suggest that uncertainty alone does not impair auditor judgments. Rather, we observe a significant downward shift in auditor-imposed adjustments only when social bonds and measurement uncertainty are both present.