ABSTRACT
Regulators and professional bodies around the world are aware of the importance of auditors’ individual characteristics and set different requirements that people should meet in order to become and remain certified auditors. This chapter focuses on the most important/studied individual factors, mainly looking at the articles published in top accounting and auditing journals. It examines the impact of individual auditor’s characteristics on audit processes/outcomes, using analytical models. In particular, criminal convictions are used as a proxy for audit partners’ personal risk preference. The chapter presents the results of the auditing studies that consider auditor’s age, gender, and national identities. A large part of the judgement and decision-making (JDM) audit research has examined the relation between auditor knowledge and performance. C. L. Chin and H. Y. Chi and H. Y. Chi and C. L. Chin study the impact of audit partner’s industry expertise on audit quality conducting a non-JDM archival research.
