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In crafting Auditing Standard No.3 (AS3), a primary objective of the PCAOB was to reduce auditors' exposure to litigation by raising the standard of care for audit documentation. We examine whether the increased documentation requirements of AS3 affect legal professionals' perceptions of audit quality and auditor responsibility in the event of an audit failure. Our experiment consists of a 3 × 2 between-participants design with law students serving as proxies for legal professionals. The results of our experiment indicate that when an audit procedure, namely the investigation of inconsistent evidence, is not required to be documented, legal professionals perceive the performance of the work itself but not its documentation to significantly increase audit quality and reduce the auditor's responsibility for an audit failure. When documentation of the procedure is required, as per AS3, legal professionals perceive enhanced audit quality and reduced auditor responsibility only if the performance of the work is documented.

The purpose of this study is to expand upon accounting literature that highlights the benefits of hardiness in the accounting environment. Accordingly, the relationship between hardiness and accounting task performance is investigated across two scenarios in the presence of conscientiousness, a well‐documented predictor of performance (Barrick and Mount).

Subjects completed a bank reconciliation task with either an immediate deadline or a non‐immediate deadline. The personality traits were measured with scales from prior literature.

The relationship between the commitment dimension of hardiness and task performance was positive and significant in the presence of the immediate deadline, but not the non‐immediate deadline. Conversely, the conscientiousness‐task performance relationship was positive and significant under the non‐immediate deadline, but not the immediate deadline. Additional analysis revealed a significant association between commitment and detection of errors.

Since task performance was measured in relation to one task, the generalizability of the results is limited. However, the results imply that hardiness serves as a relevant variable in cognitive performance models.

The hardiness trait appears to produce positive outcomes in the accounting environment. Accounting educators and firm leaders should understand how the trait is expressed and activated in order to train professionals on critical accounting and auditing tasks.

This paper provides new evidence about the benefits of the hardy personality in accounting settings. Additionally, the results offer a basis for researchers to incorporate hardiness as an individual difference in studies on auditor performance.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that one of the more difficult issues faced by accounting students is the understanding and preparation of the statement of cash flows (SCF). This study investigates the impact of different instruction methods for covering the statement on student learning outcomes. Currently, two prominent intermediate-level financial accounting texts cover the SCF primarily in one end-of-text chapter, a massed presentation. The current study argues that the SCF is a topic that is cross-sectional in nature, and is applicable to the textbook material on the accounting transactions that are spread throughout the texts. In accordance with the spacing effect (Dempster, 1988), instruction of SCF material across the major recognition and measurement topic chapters, a spaced presentation format, potentially yields enhanced learning outcomes in comparison to the massed presentation.

Across three semesters of an intermediate-level financial accounting course, the SCF delivery format and coverage were varied in a 1 × 3 between-subjects experiment. The subjects completed an indirect-method SCF preparation task, which I analyzed across the three conditions.

Students learning the SCF presentation of intermediate-level transactions in a spaced presentation earned higher scores on the task compared to those learning the material in a massed format. Furthermore, the students exposed to the massed presentation performed no better than those not instructed on the material.

I base my findings on the results of one assessment of the SCF in one course. Future research should consider various tasks related to the SCF at different course levels and across a variety of instructional techniques.

The results imply that changes to the delivery of SCF material could potentially produce benefits to student learning.