Refusing to play the game? Junior auditors and a standpoint perspective on audit quality in a Big-4 accounting firm

Abstract

Following numerous high-profile scandals, the issue of audit quality continues to attract extensive debate among practitioners, policy makers and academics. Meanwhile, an increasingly ‘pluralistic’ multi-method literature has developed, seeking to better understand audit failure through the range of cultures and working practices in accounting firms. In this paper, we draw on the theory of ‘critical performativity’ to further our understanding of the backstage socio-technical arrangements contributing to audit failure. In elaborating on the methodology for such an approach, we conduct a multi-method ‘standpoint’ analysis from the perspective of junior auditors, following a major audit quality initiative in a Big-4 firm. Our analysis shows that the initiative not only failed to address core audit quality issues, it also exacerbated them by driving a less critical “box-ticking” approach in a “get it done at all costs” culture. We found that a significant number of trainees developed critical perspectives on auditing as they pushed back against this “box-ticking” approach and sought to place more emphasis on challenging the client. We frame these trainees as “refusing to play the game”, but note that these critical perspectives were increasingly marginalised within the firm, with the large majority of these trainees planning to leave the firm at the end of their training contracts. We suggest that these conclusions, which are drawn from critical perspectives within the firm, provide us with an important basis from which to make practical suggestions on how junior auditors can be better supported, and how their critical perspectives can be further developed.