Can I Interrupt You? Understanding and Minimizing the Negative Effects of Brief Interruptions on Audit Judgment Quality

Abstract

Interruptions are an inescapable characteristic of auditors' socially driven work environment, and the continuing growth of digital technologies implies that interruptions will increase. We investigate the effect of brief, but expected, interruptions on audit judgment quality, and whether giving auditors notice of the timing of the impending interruption minimizes negative effects arising from interruptions. Employing an experimental on-line setting, we find that auditors' performance deteriorates when they are briefly interrupted during the completion of an audit task. Our results highlight that this is partly explained by poorer recall of information encountered prior to the interruption. We find that notifying auditors in advance when the expected interruption will occur reduces the extent to which memory and judgment quality is negatively affected. Our results have important implications for audit firms in their attempts to deal with environments increasingly characterized by interruptions.