Taking on Too Much, Too Soon? An Exploration of Experiential Learning of Novice Auditors in an Offshoring Setting

Abstract

Outsourcing and offshoring have become common practice among audit firms and have introduced dynamic changes to the experiences of novice auditors. Tasks once performed by novice auditors are now performed by firm members outside the core audit team, which in turn frees up novice auditors to perform different types of tasks. We utilize a 2 × 2 mixed design to manipulate the task type and the order in which tasks are performed to answer questions about knowledge acquisition among novice auditors. We examine accuracy on a confirmations task and sequential learning experienced by novice auditors. Our results show that the type of experience is important to novice auditors' performance as is the order in which these experiences occur. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for improving novice auditors training and on the job experience in the changing environment of audits.