Auditor Business Process Analysis and Linkages among Auditor Risk Judgments

Abstract

SUMMARY: This research note examines whether auditors “link” their entity-level risk assessments to their core business process risk assessments. For auditors who performed a business process analysis of the core business process, there is a positive association between the identification of significant process-level business risks and the identification of significant business risks at the entity level. We also find that performing a business process analysis leads to higher assessments of the risk of material misstatement at the process level. With respect to the linkages between risk-related judgments, we find that auditors link their assessments of misstatement risk at the process level to similar assessments at the entity level, while taking into account significant process-level risks. Data Availability: The data are available from the first author upon request.