Testing auditor-client interactions without letting auditors and clients fully interact: Comments on Bennett and Hatfield (2018)

Bennett and Hatfield (2018) conduct a role-playing experiment that provides important evidence on how face-to-face communication enhances the professional skepticism of auditors' inquiries, relative to written (email) communication. However, their study captures only part of the richness of auditor-client communication, with findings that could possibly interact with the effects of computer-mediated communication on the propensity for auditors to undertake an inquiry (e.g., Bennett & Hatfield, 2013) or on how client personnel choose to respond (e.g., Saiewitz & Kida, 2018). Experiments of this nature are limited by the fact that participants play only one role, with the other role fixed by design. This commentary challenges future researchers to push the frontier beyond these settings by considering the potential for truly interactive studies that examine how auditor and client personnel respond to each other.