Effect of ethics and professionalism on audit quality: A moderating role of dysfunctional audit behavior

Abstract

Dysfunctional auditor behavior becomes a driving variable for audit quality when an auditor has good ethics and professionalism. This study examines whether the ethics and professionalism of auditors can affect audit quality; dysfunctional audit behavior is used as a moderating variable. The study sample includes 348 auditors employed at public accounting companies throughout Indonesia and enlisted by the Indonesian Institute of Certified Public Accountants Directory. This paper used the SEM approach with WarpPLS software to analyze the respective data. Thus, it was found that auditors’ ethics and professionalism significantly and positively influence audit quality.Meanwhile, dysfunctional audit behavior significantly moderated the relationship between professionalism and audit quality. In contrast, this behavior was not a moderating variable for auditors’ ethics and audit quality association. An interesting finding is the indicators of auditors’ ethical behavior in accepting audit engagements, where audit engagements are still accepted even though an auditor shares an association with an auditee. In conclusion, future studies can examine in more detail the effect of audit acceptance process on audit quality.