Both management bias and measurement imprecision threaten the accurate reporting of complex accounting estimates, yet audit policymakers and practitioners often place a strong emphasis on bias. I examine whether directing auditors’ attention towards management bias can come at the expense of insufficient auditor sensitivity to measurement imprecision, potentially threatening overall audit quality. My primary investigation, Study 1, finds that when managers’ explicit incentives to bias financial reports are relatively weaker, an imbalanced emphasis on bias causes auditor-like participants in a stylized setting to “lower their guard” to a greater extent than when environmental factors place a more balanced emphasis on bias and imprecision. Study 2 indicates that an imbalanced emphasis on imprecision does not similarly distract auditors from bias. Study 3 utilizes a more contextually rich setting and demonstrates that an imbalanced emphasis on bias prompts even professional auditors to neglect imprecision. Accordingly, this paper suggests that a balanced emphasis on both management bias and measurement imprecision can mitigate negative consequences of auditors focusing on the former and neglecting the latter.

管理偏见和计量不准确性都威胁着复杂会计估计的准确报告，但是审计政策制定者和从业人员常常非常重视偏见。我研究了将审计师的注意力转移到管理偏见上是否会以审计师对度量不精确性的敏感性不足为代价，从而可能威胁到整体审计质量。我的主要调查研究1发现，当经理们偏向财务报告的明确动机相对较弱时，偏见的不平衡强调会导致风格化环境中类似审计师的参与者比环境因素更大程度地“降低警惕”更偏重偏见和不精确。研究2表明，对不精确性的不平衡强调并不能同样地分散审计人员的偏见。研究3利用了一个更富于上下文的环境，并证明了偏见的不平衡强调甚至促使职业审计师忽略不准确性。因此，本文建议，平衡地强调管理偏见和度量不精确性可以减轻关注前者而忽视后者的审计师的负面后果。