Is It Time for Auditor Independence Yet?

M. H. Bazerman; D. A. Moore

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Article | Accounting, Organizations and Society

Is It Time for Auditor Independence Yet?

by M. H. Bazerman and D. A. Moore

Abstract

Well before the collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, we argued that the auditing system had been corrupted by the incentives auditors face to please their clients. We stated that even honest auditors were incapable of independence within the current regulatory framework. We document the failure to make sufficient changes to our institutions, highlight the barriers to needed changes, and challenge society to act before the next disaster.

Keywords: Accounting Audits; Change; Crime and Corruption; Customer Satisfaction; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Failure; Motivation and Incentives;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Bazerman, M. H., and D. A. Moore. "Is It Time for Auditor Independence Yet?" Accounting, Organizations and Society 36, nos. 4-5 (May–July 2011).

About the Author

Max H. Bazerman

Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets

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Article | Harvard Business Review Digital Articles | April 29, 2020

How Should We Allocate Scarce Medical Resources?

Max Bazerman, Regan Bernhard, Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang and Netta Barak-Corren

Who should get a ventilator if there aren’t enough to go around? Research on decision making leads to three concrete guidelines that policy-makers and physicians can use to make fair choices when allocating scarce, life-saving resources. The key to making fair and ethical choices is to assure that decisions are made through an impartial process.

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Resource Allocation; Decision Making; Policy; Fairness; Ethics;

Citation:
Bazerman, Max, Regan Bernhard, Joshua D. Greene, Karen Huang, and Netta Barak-Corren. "How Should We Allocate Scarce Medical Resources?" Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (April 29, 2020). View Details

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Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

Ariella Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely

Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS (Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman, 2012, “Signing at the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-reports in Comparison to Signing at the End”) provided evidence for a simple way of encouraging honest reporting: asking people to sign a veracity statement at the beginning instead of at the end of a self-report form. Since this finding was published, various government agencies have adopted this practice. However, in this project, we failed to replicate this result. Across five conceptual replications (N = 4,559) and one highly powered, pre-registered, direct replication (N = 1,235) conducted with the authors of the original paper, we observed no effect of signing first on honest reporting. Given the policy applications of this result, it is important to update the scientific record regarding the veracity of these results.

Keywords: Morality; nudge; policy-making; replication; honesty; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Policy;

Citation:
Kristal, Ariella, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar, and Dan Ariely. "Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117, no. 13 (March 31, 2020). View Details

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Editorial | Scientific American | March 21, 2020

When We're Wrong, It's Our Responsibility as Scientists to Say So

Ariella Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely

We tried to reproduce our 2012 paper on how to make people report their income more honestly—and we ended up refuting it.

Keywords: responsibility; Outcome or Result;

Citation:
Kristal, Ariella, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar, and Dan Ariely. "When We're Wrong, It's Our Responsibility as Scientists to Say So." Scientific American (March 21, 2020). View Details

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Is It Time for Auditor Independence Yet?

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