Drawing on the triangulation framework of audit evidence (Bell, Peecher, & Solomon, 2005; Peecher, Schwartz, & Solomon, 2007), we experimentally test for the conditions, if any, under which financial-statement auditors alter their fraud-risk assessments based on whether external evidence provides positive or negative news about underlying business performance. We focus on the condition in which two kinds of management-controlled audit evidence – evidence from the financial statements and evidence from internal data depicting performance of a key business process – is contradicted by external evidence suggesting that a key business objective has not been attained. According to the triangulation framework, such contradictory external evidence should heighten auditors’ skepticism about the veracity of management-controlled evidence and increase their assessment of fraud risk.
The experimental findings indicate that auditors’ assessments of fraud risk significantly depend on whether or not external evidence disconfirms the attainment of a key business objective, but only when conflicting messages are provided by the two kinds of internal evidence. Importantly, auditors did not rely on external evidence when, in isolation, the two kinds of management-controlled internal evidence both suggested low fraud risk. Auditors’ failure to use external evidence as a means of ensuring the veracity of management- controlled internal evidence is more consistent with a credulous than with a skeptical mindset