This study evaluates whether auditor use of root cause analysis (RCA) for an identified client misstatement affects auditors' assessments of underlying control issues and materiality in an integrated audit setting. We also test whether auditor cognitive style moderates these effects given prior findings that a misfit between task structure and cognitive style undermines performance. This research is motivated by concerns about integrated audit quality and auditors failing to consider control deficiencies indicated by client misstatements. We randomly assigned 147 auditors to four RCA treatments (No RCA, Unstructured RCA, Structured “5 Whys” RCA, Structured “Fishbone” RCA). As predicted, the results suggest that auditors using (not using) structured RCA are more (less) likely to identify control-related root causes of a financial misstatement and judge the misstatement to be more (less) material. Also consistent with our prediction, we find that the assessed severity of identified control deficiencies mediates RCA's effect on materiality judgments. Finally, the materiality judgment results reveal the expected significant interaction between structured RCA method and auditor cognitive style, suggesting the importance of allowing flexibility in the specific RCA method applied in practice. Overall, the study's results provide evidence that auditor use of RCA as a judgment framework prompts deeper evaluation of audit findings and stronger consideration of critical links between financial reporting and related internal controls in integrated audit settings.

中文翻译：

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综合审计中根本原因分析及其对审计师判断和决策的影响*

本研究评估审计师针对已识别的客户错报使用根本原因分析 (RCA) 是否会影响审计师在综合审计环境中对潜在控制问题和重要性的评估。鉴于先前的发现，任务结构和认知风格之间的不匹配会破坏绩效，我们还测试了审计员的认知风格是否会缓和这些影响。这项研究的动机是对综合审计质量的担忧以及审计师未能考虑客户错报所表明的控制缺陷。我们将 147 名审计员随机分配到四种 RCA 处理（无 RCA、非结构化 RCA、结构化“5 个为什么”RCA、结构化“鱼骨”RCA）。正如预测的那样，结果表明，使用（不使用）结构化 RCA 的审计师更有可能（不太）识别与控制相关的财务错报的根本原因，并判断错报的重要性更高（更少）。同样与我们的预测一致的是，我们发现所确定的控制缺陷的评估严重程度介导了 RCA 对重要性判断的影响。最后，重要性判断结果揭示了结构化 RCA 方法和审计员认知风格之间预期的显着相互作用，表明在实践中应用的特定 RCA 方法允许灵活性的重要性。总体而言，该研究'