The Influence of Client Incivility and Coping Strategies on Audit Professionals’ Judgments Other uri icon

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abstract

  • Prior research provides evidence that auditors experience client incivility. We examine whether client incivility negatively influences auditors’ judgments and whether any adverse effects can be mitigated using coping strategies. We first collect descriptive evidence revealing client incivility towards auditors is more widespread than currently documented and victims tend to cope in both active and passive ways. Next, using an experiment we predict and find that audit professionals who experience client incivility are more willing to accept aggressive, client-preferred reporting due to feelings of emotional distress. We also find that coping actively mitigates the negative influence of client incivility whereas coping passively does not. Audit standards and users of financial statements expect auditors to adhere to their professional duty of maintaining a high-level of professional skepticism even when encountering uncivil clients. Our findings suggest that auditors have difficulty adhering to these expectations when they encounter uncivil clients and that only coping actively helps to counteract the harmful effects of client incivility.