The effects of judgments of new clients' integrity upon risk judgments, audit evidence, and fees

Client integrity concerns auditors when they plan new audit engagements because it is related to both fraud risk and the source credibility of clients. Auditors may increase audit work and fees when they judge integrity to be below normal. In an experiment, a sample of 63 Canadian audit partners read information about a prospective audit client, including information about the client's CFO. This information was manipulated to support a judgment of either high or low integrity. As hypothesized, judgments of client integrity were negatively related to risk judgments, audit evidence extent recommendations (indirectly through risk judgments), and fee recommendations (indirectly through risk judgments and extent recommendations).