When Does Utilizing Valuation Specialists Reduce Auditors' Litigation Risk?

Abstract

This article summarizes “The Effects of Specialist Type and Estimate Aggressiveness on Juror Judgments of Auditor Negligence” (Brown, Grenier, Pyzoha, and Reffett 2019), which examines two critical factors auditors consider when auditing complex estimates: type of specialist to engage and relative estimate aggressiveness. In an experiment involving an alleged audit failure, jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with a valuation specialist, but only when managements' estimate was more aggressive. The study does not find similar litigation benefits of using a specialist for a less aggressive estimate. A second experiment extended these results by demonstrating that jurors were less likely to find auditors negligent when the auditors consulted with an external rather than an internal specialist. Further, the benefits of using an external specialist extended to auditors who initially engaged an internal specialist and brought in an external specialist to review the internal specialist's work.