Professional skepticism is an attitude includes a questioning mind and a
critical assessment of audit evidence. Auditors should maintain a certain level of
professional skepticism in detecting financial statement fraud since the perpetrators
conceal the resulting irregularities. Two experiments were conducted. First, a 3x3
between subjects experiment design was conducted to investigate how fraud risk
assessment affect the level of professional skepticism on the different level of trust in
auditor-client relationship. Participants were randomly assigned to one of nine
condition. Second, a within subject experiment design was conducted to examines the
effect of personality type on professional skepticism. A total of] 18 junior, senior and
supervisor auditors from public accounting firm participated in the experiment. A total
of 8 participants were discarded because they failed the manipulation check. An
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for data analysis. The results suggest that
auditors with identification based trust in the high fraud risk assessment group were
more skeptical than in the low fraud risk assessment group. While the auditors with
calculus based trust showed no differences in skepticism between the high group and
the low fraud risk assessment group. Auditors with ST (Sensing-Thinking) and NT
(Intuitive-Thinking) types of personality more skeptical than other types.
Keywords: Professional Skepticism, Trust, Fraud Risk Assessment