Investigating Individual Characteristics Affecting of Auditor's Professional Skepticism

In this paper, we used Hurtt's [Hurtt, R.K. (2010), Development of a scale to measure professional skepticism, A Journal of practice & theory. 29(1), 149–171.] model to clarify determinants of skepticism of auditors. In this research, we focus on exploring concept of skepticism and find relationship between auditors’ characteristics and professional skepticism. We expect professional skepticism of auditors is determined by factors such as self-determination and confidence, suspension in judgment, questioning mind, search for knowledge, and interpersonal understanding. Also, we expect that auditor's professional experience has a positive influence on their professional skepticism. We survey professional accountants in Iran, which is an emerging market, to test our hypotheses. We obtain some support for our hypothesis related to affect of knowledge, self-confidence, and interpersonal understanding on auditors professional skepticism. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the impact of culture of auditors in emerging market of Iran and compare attained results of individual-auditor level with obtained results of other countries.