Conceptualizing Wise Auditor Decision Making based on Grounded Theory Approach

Entrance to the specialized audit profession requires to make decision and have distinct attributes and properties, which the capability of taking wise decisions is one of them. The task of auditors as a specialized profession participants, is to opine about financial statement that in turn to it requires to auditor’s neutrality in decision making. If auditors be independent from clients, in the best possible way, they can make free from bias decisions. The goal of the research is to provide a model of auditor decision making based on grounded theory approach. The research method is a developmental research in terms of goal and an exploratory research based on data collection method. According to the qualitative research method, needed data was collected through grounded theory and interview. Open coding, selective coding and theoretical coding were done too. Finally, research model designed based on the theoretical framework. The results show a structure with a component called wise auditors decision making. This approach introduces wise decision making as an emotional, cognitive, reflective and integrated process which considers internal and external condition about the decisions and focuses on the maximum number of stakeholders. The findings of the research both approve and challenge previous conceptual research about knowledge and provide a practical method for wise decision by auditors. The application of the research plays significant role because of making wider of practical perspective of knowledge in auditors and more understanding of complicated nature of decision in professional auditing context. From auditors’ perspective, the development of making wise decisions in real condition requires a multi-faced and integrated approach which can be taught.