Early Evidence on the Effects of Critical Audit Matters on Auditor Liability

The U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board recently proposed changes to the audit reporting model that would require auditors to disclose areas of high audit risk within the audit report. Concerns about the proposal’s potential to increase auditor liability have been raised by practitioners and highlighted in the business press. In this paper, we review five recent experiments that directly relate to these concerns, identify patterns in the results, and discuss the implications of these findings for regulators and practitioners.