Soft information and remote audit quality

• Bassin C., Gajewski J.-F. Heimann M. Leger P.-M. et Meunier L. 

Abstract

Despite the positive impact of remote work on the audit sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing its potential to improve efficiency, well-being, and job satisfaction among auditors, fully telecommuting in the audit sector during the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered a debate regarding its effectiveness and potential drawbacks. One important concern is that collective efficiency may decrease beyond a certain threshold of telecommuting, especially due to a lower level of valuable and quick communication among auditors, which could hinder collaboration and problem-solving. Moreover, the shortcomings in auditors’ cognition due to remote working are exacerbated by media richness issues. Though video conferences assist audit team and client interactions, a lot of soft or tacit data that could have been exchanged face‐to‐face, sometimes during informal meetings, will be lost. Thanks to a user experiment based on a simplified audit scenario in 3 steps (firm information state, exchange with the management, soft information), this paper proves that the on-site audit triggers emotional, cognitive, and attentional states which are more acute compared to a remote situation. More precisely, non corrected significant anomalies, absence of exchange with the management and alarming soft information induce higher emotion and attention from the auditors, resulting in adequate audit responses. Overall, the results prove that an effective auditor can utilize her emotions, cognition, and attention in response to a noteworthy information.