The Effect of Corporation Performance on the Correlation between Auditor's Professional Judgment and Fraud Detection

The purpose of the present research is to review the effect of corporation performance on the correlation between auditor's professional judgment and his ability of fraud detection. In terms of classification, this research is considered a descriptive survey. For data collection, a questionnaire was used. The research statistical population consisted of all 2959 members in the Iranian association of certified public accountants among whom the sample was chosen by simple random sampling. The number of statistical samples by Cochran formula was determined to be 341. For hypothesis testing, the structural equation method was used. The results showed that there is a positive relation between auditor's professional judgment and his ability to detect fraud while there is a negative correlation between corporation financial performance and ability to detect fraud. Moreover, corporation financial performance has a negative impact on the correlation between professional judgment and the ability of fraud detection. Therefore, auditors who have more professional judgment are more likely to detect fraud. However, as financial performance improves, fraud is less likely to happen in the company. It is important for the auditors to show more professional judgment during the auditing process in order to detect fraud. Furthermore, a corporation's financial performance can have a negative impact on the ability to detect fraud. It means that by the improvement of financial performance, the possibility of fraud in the economic agency decreases and thus the ability of fraud detection declines. Besides, as the auditors gain more understanding in terms of professional principles and regulations, their ability to detect and discover fraud as well as their professional judgment goes up.