Commentary on “The effect of an audit judgment rule on audit committee members’ professional skepticism: The case of accounting estimates” (Kang, Trotman, and Trotman)

These discussant comments address the Kang, Trotman, and Trotman study on whether introducing an audit judgment rule – which is analogous to the business judgment rule applied to corporate officers and directors – and deploying innovative audit procedures affect audit committee members’ questioning on accounting estimates. I believe that the authors have identified a very relevant and timely topic for analysis. In addition, the authors have done a good job motivating the importance of the topic given the increasingly regulated post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment. In these comments, I attempt to place the Kang, Trotman, and Trotman study into context and facilitate generation of research ideas by others. My comments are divided into three sections: introduction, the evolving roles and responsibilities of audit committees and independent auditors, and comments on research design and some directions for future research.