The effect of experience on the use of irrelevant evidence in auditor judgment

Auditors encounter both relevant and irrelevant information during the perf ormance of audit tasks. Prior studies have shown that the presence of irrel evant information weakens the impact of relevant information on auditors' j udgments. Such studies, however, have not considered whether experience mod erates the diluting effect of irrelevant information on auditors' judgments . This study reports the results of an experiment in which the effect of ir relevant information on the going-concern judgments of less-experienced aud itors-audit seniors-is compared to the effect of irrelevant information on the going-concern judgments of more-experienced auditors-audit managers and partners. The experiment reaffirms that irrelevant information does have a diluting effect on the judgments of audit seniors but provides new evidenc e that irrelevant information does not have a diluting effect on the judgme nts of audit managers and partners.