Auditing standards direct auditors to consider business risk and other risk factors when they evaluate the overall risk of material misstatement during the planning phase of an audit. Large audit firms generally use either a strategic-systems approach (SSA) or a transaction-focused approach...

Prior research has shown that when auditors are aware of overall risk information from procedures performed earlier in the audit, halo effects in subsequent judgments result (e.g., O'Donnell and Schultz 2005). The purpose of this study is to examine whether such effects occur in the context of...