Incremental explanatory power of individual auditor's judgment over audit firm level factors on quality of audited financial statements of companies listed in the stock exchange of Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the incremental explanatory power of individual auditor,s judgment over audit firm level factors on quality of audited financial statements. The auditors in this study are Thai SEC approved auditors. The audited financial statements used as the sample in this study are from year 2001-2004. Firm level factors include size, client importance, number of listed companies responsibilities and corporate governance. Individual level factors are technical knowledge, and ethical level which is represented by DIT (Defining Issues Test). Multiple regression is used with dependent variable, quality of audited financial statements, represented by absolute value of discretionary accruals. Other methods such as interview, designed case, and questionnaires are also applied to gather important data. The results show that (1) Firm level factors that are associated with quality of audited financial statement are size, client importance and number of listed companies' responsibilities. (2) The results also support the hypothesis that individual auditor's judgment has an incremental explanatory power over audit firm level factors on quality of audited financial statements. (3) In term of individual auditor's judgment, high ethics as well as client importance create high quality of audited financial statements. If the auditor has high ethics, high client importance will not affect the quality. However, low ethics together with high client importance will affect the audit's quality.