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Auditor Perceptions Of Audit Workloads, Audit Quality, And The Auditing Profession, Julie Persellin, Jaime Schmidt, Michael Wilkins

Michael S Wilkins

In this study, we use a survey instrument to obtain perspectives from over 700 auditors about present-day audit workloads, the relationship between audit workloads and audit quality, and auditing as a career. Our findings indicate that auditors are working, on average, five hours per week above the threshold at which they believe audit quality begins to deteriorate and often 20 hours above this threshold at the peak of busy season. We find that auditors perceive workload fatigue as having the largest negative impact on morale, and understaffing and staff turnover as being two of the biggest impediments to delivering a …