Can auditors predict the choices made by other auditors?

An implicit assumption of prior literature on strategic behavior of auditor s is that auditors know the preferences of their colleagues. In this study, we conduct an experiment to investigate the validity of this assumption. I n our experiment, we match a manager with a pair of top and mediocre audit seniors, as assessed by their firm. Each auditor predicts the choices that will be made by other auditors on two tasks that differ in their level of a mbiguity. Our results show no difference in the accuracy among managers, to p seniors, and mediocre seniors when they predict the choices made by speci fic individual auditors for both tasks. When predicting the number of manag ers and seniors who will choose a specific option on the high-ambiguity tas k, managers outperform top seniors, who in turn outperform mediocre seniors . For the low-ambiguity task, we find no difference among managers, top sen iors, and mediocre seniors. Our results provide some limited support for mo dels of strategic auditor behavior, and indicate that the ability to predic t the choices of others is a dimension of an auditor's expertise.