Successful audit workpaper review strategies in electronic environments

In a prior paper by Bible, Graham, and Rosman (2005), the authors provided a theory to predict that electronic work environments were more cognitively complex than traditional paper environments and found evidence consistent with the theory. Auditors reviewing workpapers in an electronic work environment were less able to identify seeded errors than auditors who were working in a traditional paper environment. This paper uses detailed concurrent verbal protocols for a subset of the participants in the previous paper to extend this line of research. Specifically, it examines how strategies in electronic work environments would differ from those in traditional paper environments to accommodate the greater complexity of electronic work environments. Of particular interest are the strategies that are applied by those who performed well in each environment, because they provide insight into the type of behavior to be modeled. Consistent with the theoretical frameworks of audit task complexity (Bonner [1994]), cognitive load (Sweller, van Merriënboer, & Paas [1998]; Ayres [2001]; Kester, Kirschner, van Merriënboer, & Baumer [2001]), and the adaptive decision maker (Newell & Simon [1972]; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson [1993]), the results show that successful auditors tended to navigate less (e.g., plan and acquire information) and process more (e.g., rehearse, corroborate, and confirm information that was in memory) in the electronic environment. The implication of these findings for practice is that auditors can use strategies that appropriately reflect or adapt to the complexity of the task environment.