Keywords

auditing, human expertise, expertise, auditing literature

Abstract

Research on human expertise in auditing contexts is an important area of study. Our objective in this paper is to present an approach to conducting research on human expertise. We begin with some issues of terminology and then propose a strategy for inquiry into the phenomena of expertise. Finally, we attempt to illustrate this strategy with three examples of recently completed work. The examples include: two from the auditing literature that involve the analysis of internal control and a medical diagnosis case which illustrates the "garden path" problem that is of concern in any decision making context, including auditing.