품질관리검토시간을 통한 감사위험에 대한 감사인의 차별적 대응 (Auditors’ Differential Responses to Audit Risks Through Quality Control Review Hours)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 40권 / 6호 / 81 ~ 117페이지
· 저자명 : 배길수, 이재은, 노준화, 최승욱

초록

본 연구는 외감법 개정에 따라 2014 회계연도부터 감사보고서의 ‘감사실태보고자료’에 첨부된 품질관리검토시간 공시정보가 감사위험에 따른 감사인 대응행동의 차이를 나타내는지 조사한다. 선행연구(Francis and Krishnan 1999)에서는 감사위험이 높을 경우, 투입시간의 증가, 전문성이 높은 인력의 투입, 감사보수의 증가 등의 대응방법을 감사인이 선택한다고 보고하였다. 이러한 가정에 의하면, 감사위험이 높을수록 품질관리검토시간비율은 증가하고, 높은 감사위험에 따른 감사시간ㆍ보수 증가 효과는 품질관리검토시간비율에 따라 차별적으로 나타날 것이다. 본 연구는 이에 대한 실증조사이다. 본 연구에서 높은 감사위험은 전기와 당기 재량발생액(실적대응재량발생액절댓값)으로 측정하였다. 연구대상 최종표본은 2014년 12월 결산 코스피ㆍ코스닥 상장 비금융업 1,449개 기업이다.
실증조사 결과, 감사인이 인지한 감사위험(전기 또는 당기재량발생액절댓값)이 높을수록 품질관리검토시간비율이 대체로 높았다. 또한 품질관리검토시간비율이 높아지면 감사위험(전기 또는 당기재량발생액절댓값)이 높을 경우의 감사시간 증분차이는 이에 따라 함께 증가하고, 감사보수 증분차이는 유의한 차이가 없으며, 시간당감사보수 증분차이는 유의하게 감소하였다. 강건성 분석에서도 높은 감사위험 하에서 품질관리검토시간비율 증가시 시간당보수 증분차이의 감소라는 수익성 악화현상이 일관되게 나타났다. 이 조사결과는 감사수익성을 희생하더라도 높은 감사위험에 더 많은 투입노력을 기울인다고 보고한 선행연구(Schelleman and Knechel 2010)와 일맥상통한다. 한편, 전체 표본을 Big 4 감사법인과 Non-big 4 감사법인 표본을 구분한 경우에는 양 표본그룹 사이에 감사인의 대응이 위험요소별로 다소 차이가 있지만, 대체로 감사위험 증가시 품질관리검토시간비율 증가현상과, 감사위험이 높을 때 품질관리검토시간비율이 증가하면 시간당보수가 하락하는 것은 동일하다. 본 연구의 공헌점은, 외감법 개정에 따라 2014 회계연도부터 시행된 품질관리검토시간 공시정보가 감사위험에 대한 감사인의 차별적 대응행동을 식별할 수 있게 함으로써 품질관리업무에 대한 회계감독 목적으로 유용한 정보임을 확인한다.

영어초록

Francis and Krishnan (1999) suggest that auditors respond to earnings management in five ways: (1) screen out high-risk clients, (2) charge a fee premium, (3) adjust audit effort, (4) negotiate financial statement adjustments, and/or (5) report more conservatively. In this study, we focus on (2) and (3) above. Several prior studies demonstrate that earnings management affects audit fees and/or hours (Gul et al. 2003; Bedard and Johnstone 2004; Schelleman and Knechel 2010), providing evidence that both audit effort and pricing are affected by accruals. In particular, Schelleman and Knechel (2010) provide explanations for engagement profitability in the context of risk-adjusted audit fees.
This paper investigates (1) the effect of increased levels of audit risks perceived by the auditors on the quality control review hours, and (2) the combined association of the increased audit risk level (measured by quality control review hours) with the auditors’ responses (audit hours, audit fees, and the hourly audit fees) to the auditors’ perceived audit risks. Our paper exploits the Korean regulation setting which mandates audit firms to report the “audit details information” in the audit reports from the fiscal year 2014. This regulation requires auditors to disclose the quality control review hours expended for the specific audit in each audit report.
Prior studies expect that auditors respond to high audit risks by increasing audit hours (Bell et al. 2001; Bedard and Johnstone 2004) and audit fees (Gul et al. 2003). Further, Bell et al.(2008) and Schelleman and Knechel (2010) suggest that audit firms assign more experienced and (or) specialist professionals for risky clients even when they may not able to recoup the normal engagement profits from those audits. This finding indicates that as perceived audit risk increases, audit firms likely increase audit hours and/or also put more quality control review hours. Moreover, Matsumura and Tucker (1995) report that audit issues raised by quality control review partners are usually addressed successfully, but tend to increase interactions among the audit engagement team, the quality control review partner, and the client in the interacting process, which eventually increases audit inputs (i.e., audit hours). Based on this argument, we expect that auditors will exhibit different behavior with quality control review hours in accordance with perceived audit risk. The difference in auditor behavior, in turn, will be manifested as differences in audit hours, audit fees, and hourly audit fees.
Our initial sample is consisted of 1,620 non-financial listed companies with December 2014 fiscal year. We first dropped the companies that lack the necessary financial variables and audit fee and hour information for the analysis. We also eliminated the companies with audit hours less than 100 and companies in industries with less than 10 observations. After this screen, our final sample is consisted of 1,449 companies. We use the absolute performance-matched discretionary accruals as the proxy for auditors’ perceived audit risk.
We find that auditors’ perceived audit risk is significantly associated with the level of quality control review hours ratio. We also find that an increase in quality control review hours ratio leads to a significant increase in incremental audit hours when audit risk is high, but no corresponding increase in incremental audit fees, resulting in the significantly lower incremental hourly audit fee. This finding is consistent with Schelleman and Knechel (2010), who find that auditors respond to higher risk by increasing audit inputs even when they sacrifice engagement profitability. One possible explanation for this auditors’ response to audit risk is that auditors address high audit risk even at the expense of sacrificing profitability of the engagement. Also, an increase in the quality control review hours ratio leads to higher engagement team hours designed to address the quality control review issues. Our additional analyses also find that differential auditors’ responses are not constant across audit firms with a different size.
This paper makes several contributions to the existing literature. First, prior studies find that audit risks are positively associated with higher audit fees and quality control reviewers’ activities are associated with increased audit inputs and fees. Our work investigates the combined relationship between the quality control review inputs and audit risks, audit hours, audit fees and the hourly audit fees. As such, it provides insights into understanding auditors’ behaviors when quality control review efforts and audit risks are considered simultaneously. Second, although there are many experimental studies, few empirical studies have investigated quality control review procedures. Therefore, our empirical evidence expands the scope of the extant research. Third, we contribute to the related literature by showing that disclosing quality control review hours in the “audit details information” likely provides additional useful information to investors and other interested parties to understand auditors’ behaviors in response to the increased audit risk.

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