Cognitive moral development and auditor independence

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of cognitive moral development on an auditor's independence judgments. Over three-hundred audit professionals participated in a field experiment in which they completed a measure of moral development and responded to an ethical dilemma involving auditor independence. The most significant findings are that an auditor's level of moral development affected his or her sensitivity to ethical issues and independence judgments. Additionally, the influence of the audit firm, partitioned by size, moderated the moral development-independence relationship.