The impact of auditors’ industry knowledge and experience on premature sign-offs: Evidence from Jordan

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the impact of auditors’ industry knowledge (AIK) and auditor experience (EXP) on premature sign-offs (PMSOs) among external auditors. PMSOs is one of dysfunctional behaviours in auditing that eventually affects the audit quality. Audit quality is defined as all audit procedures are satisfactorily performed and stakeholders are not negatively affected with the results of poor audit quality. While the topic of audit quality has received great attention from previous studies decades ago, studies on how AIK and auditor experience affects PMSOs are limited. Therefore, this study examined the effects of AIK and auditor experience on PMSOs. Survey data was gathered from 144 auditors in the Jordanian audit firms. AMOS-SEM was used to analyse the data for testing the hypotheses. Results revealed that AIK and auditor experience negatively affected PMSOs. Based on these findings, this study suggests that to a certain extent PMSOs practices are prevalent in Jordanian audit firms, AIK, and auditor experience are a measure that can be used to reduce the PMSOs practices. Thus, this study provides empirical evidence of the impact factor determining the effect of auditor knowledge in the industry and auditor experience on the dysfunctional behaviour-PSMOs and impact on audit quality. The limitations of this study and recommendations for future research are also provided.