Investigating the effect of Professional Ethics and Personal Moral Philosophy on Auditors' Fraud Detection Capability according to moderating role of Professional Skepticism

Abstract

Recent years studies show that external auditing occupies a low position (eighth place) among the methods of detecting fraud; as a result, it is important to examine which factors can improve external auditorschr('39') performance in detecting fraud. Therefore, the goal of this research is to study the effect of professional ethics and personal moral philosophy (subjective norm) and professional skepticism (attitude towards behavior) on external auditorschr('39') performance fraud detecting based on theory of planned behavior. This research is categorized as an applied one. Studying literature review, research data have been collected by a questionnaire. The statistical sample using cluster sampling method includes 159 private and public sector auditors and research period is dated during 2020. Data analyzing utilized by partial least squares (PLS) through Smart-PLS2 software. The results show that professional ethics and the ethical orientation of idealism have positive direct and indirect effect on the Fraud Detection Capability through mediator variable of professional skepticism. Moreover, ethical orientation of relativism has direct negative effect on fraud detecting capability; besides ethical orientation of relativism has indirect effect on fraud detecting capability through mediator variable of professional skepticism.