CAQ and AAA Auditing Section Announce 2019 Awards for Access to Audit Personnel Program

The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) and the Auditing Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA) have made four new awards under the Access to Audit Personnel Program. Now in its seventh year, the program connects academics with audit practitioners to participate in research projects.

“The CAQ and its member firms are pleased to participate in the Access to Audit Personnel Program, which continues to be an integral part the public company auditing profession’s constructive engagement with the academic community,” said CAQ Executive Director Julie Bell Lindsay. “We congratulate the award recipients, whose work can advance audit quality and strengthen our capital markets.”

Of the proposals received in 2019, the review committee selected the following projects to support:

Lindsay M. Andiola, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Effect of Early Prompts on Auditors’ Going Concern Reporting Judgments (with Tamara A. Lambert and Marietta Peytcheva, Lehigh University)
Christy Nielson, University of Georgia, Investigating How Empowerment Improves Auditors’ Skepticism and Fraud Detection (with Ashley Austin, University of Richmond, and Tina Carpenter and Margaret Christ, University of Georgia)
K. Kelli Saunders, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Outcome Bias or Surrogation? Examining Audit Reviewer Evaluations of Skeptical Actions (with Mary E. Marshall, Louisiana Tech University; and Chad M. Stefaniak, University of South Carolina)
Amy C. Tegeler, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Auditors’ Reaction to Feedback from PCAOB Inspections (with Veena L. Brown, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Denise H. Downey, Villanova University)

The Access to Audit Personnel Program will connect these researchers with approximately 550 auditors at CAQ Governing Board firms. Since the program’s inception, the CAQ and the AAA Auditing Section have supported 26 academic projects and provided access to over 3,300 audit practitioners.

“The Access to Audit Personnel Program’s role of connecting researchers with real-life auditors is important and unique,” said Kathryn Kadous, President of the AAA Auditing Section and Schaefer Chaired Professor of Accounting and Director and Associate Dean of PhD Program at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “We look forward to seeing the insights generated by these projects.”

The 2020 Request for Proposals, which provides information on the evaluation criteria during the next award cycle, is now available on the CAQ website. Proposals are due by Thursday, February 6, 2020.