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The traditional image of an accountant as a boring, number cruncher may affect the likelihood that students with certain personality traits pursue the profession. This paper aims to identify differences in the traditional personality traits and cognitive styles associated with an accountant and identify the personality traits and cognitive styles of students currently entering the profession using empirical data.

A survey including a previously validated scale based on the Myers–Briggs type indicator and the Rational-Experiential Inventory-10 short scale was administered to 182 students enrolled in upper-level accounting courses.

Agreeing with the traditional image of an accountant, this study finds an uneven split for sensing/intuition and judgment/perception. Interestingly, this study finds a near even split in extraversion/introversion, thinking/feeling and cognition/intuition, which may affect interactions within the workplace. These near-even splits may indicate a positive shift in those pursuing a career in accounting toward individuals more capable of thinking outside the “box.”

This study informs firms of changes in the characteristics of accounting graduates entering the profession. Many firms have promoted the need for skills such as critical thinking, teamwork and communication recently, and it is expected that potential employees would exhibit these skills and behaviors. Determining the characteristics of new staff auditors, using empirical data, is critical given the increased analytical and interpersonal skills expected of those currently entering the profession.

Assessing the current composition of students pursuing careers in accounting is important because individuals’ personality differences can account for a large portion of differences in their behaviors. Shifting away from the stereotypical boring, nerdy, number cruncher accountant to a more colorful individual who thinks outside the “box” could have both positive and negative implications on the quality of work performed.

Based on his experience during the past two decades of research, teaching, and administration in a department composed of Accounting and Information Systems, the author makes several observations as well as some predictions for the next two decades based on trends that suggest accounting students need strong technology and analytics skills, as well as understand how new forms of trust mechanisms can impact their work. Predictions, in the absence of having a crystal ball, is a difficult task and can merely rely on technological trends and developments. Some trends can have a high likelihood of finding traction and have transformational power to fundamentally change the nature of work for accounting and auditors responsible for information assurance even beyond financial information, to other types of real-time streaming information. The potential transformation of the accounting profession has implications for teaching and curriculum development that can prepare students for new work paradigms.

We develop and test an innovative approach to teaching financial statement analysis (FSA) and assessing student learning outcomes based on making complex stock investment decisions compared to professional analysts. We train students to apply FSA and emphasize interdisciplinary factors and high integrative complexity. Our innovative FSA teaching approach, which we apply in an MBA financial reporting course, involves the instructor lecturing on FSA as a tool for integrative and complex decision making, students researching and applying FSA to public companies, and presenting the rationale for individual and group stock investment decisions. The instructor gives high-quality and timely feedback on the students’ application of FSA with a focus on investment judgments involving critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. Our detailed efficacy analysis shows that our FSA teaching approach is effective. Students who perceive a public company to have credible management, effective competitive strategy, and an acceptable level of financial flexibility make comparable individual and group stock investment decisions as professional analysts.

Reports citing excessive CEO compensation continue to make the news with evidence of peer relationships between the CEO and the compensation committee often the center of debate. The compensation committee of the board of directors determines CEO pay and is often comprises CEOs from other companies as well as non-CEOs such as academic, exgovernment, and professional individuals. This study examines the influence of the psychological factor of social comparison over accounting performance measures in a compensation experiment with 176 subjects. The results of this study are consistent with social comparison theory in that CEO director-subjects award greater pay and shield the compensation of the CEO when firm accounting performance is below average. Additionally, we find shielding is mitigated when subjects are informed that the decision of the amount of compensation awarded will be revealed to the public.

The pressure is on organizations to go beyond automating their internal audit activities and develop and integrate internal auditing into business processes of the enterprise. This paper aims to propose a “full power” continuous auditing (CA) model with three key components: electronic audit evidence functions; intra‐process auditing; and inter‐process auditing.

This paper follows a design science approach by identifying relevant problems from the current literature, defining the objectives of the study, designing and developing the “full power” CA model, and evaluating the model. The model supports business process‐centric auditing and enhances the business monitoring capacities of organizations enabling the fulfillment of increasingly stringent compliance requirements with internal policies as well as external regulations.

This work has attempted to fill the gap between the enterprise solutions offered by enterprise system providers and a structured approach to auditing within enterprise environments by proposing the IIPCA model which combines the automated controls inherent in the systems with continuous audits based on electronic audit evidence. The approach provides for auditing both within and between processes ensuring comprehensiveness of the audit process.

The paper makes a contribution by proposing a “full power” continuous auditing model on the principle of continuous monitoring and with predefined building block components; facilitating the integration of continuous auditing within business information processing in an enterprise using different building blocks; and giving practitioners insight on the adoption of the CA in the enterprise and how it will enhance their audit effectiveness, and audit efficiency.

This study seeks to identify the role that peer team members' behaviors and superiors' preferences play in influencing the likelihood that staff auditors engage in dysfunctional audit behavior (DAB).

This study uses an experiment that manipulates peer team member behavior (DAB present or DAB absent) and superior preference (efficiency or effectiveness). Students enrolled in a graduate accounting course, proxying for inexperienced staff auditors, receive an internal control sample selection task. Participants assess the likelihood that a typical staff auditor would engage in DAB or non-DAB.

First, staff auditors with a peer team member who engages in DAB are more likely to engage in DAB. Second, staff auditors who have a superior with a preference toward efficiency are more likely to engage in DAB. Finally, when considered simultaneously, the effect of the superior's preference on the likelihood of staff auditors engaging in DAB is not different for staff auditors, subject to a peer engaging in DAB versus those subject to a peer who engaged in a non-DAB.

This study uses a hypothetical audit team, a written script of team member communication, and students proxying for inexperienced staff auditors. As such, future studies might consider improving the realism of the team setting, the manner in which a message is portrayed, and implications at higher levels within the audit team hierarchy.

Team interactions contribute to the prevalence of DAB within the profession. Specifically, inexperienced auditors are influenced by the behavior of peer and superior team members and this may be one cause of the prevalence of DAB within the profession. As such, future firm considerations could include well-structured mentorship programs and rewards structures.

This study adds to the audit team literature by investigating the influence of audit team dynamics on staff auditors' behaviors. This paper extends the current audit team literature, that is mostly focused on supervisor–subordinate relationships, by investigating social influences from peers and superiors. This study's findings inform public accounting firms of areas in which personnel may negatively affect audit quality through intra-team interactions.