About

Sudip Bhattacharjee is a Professor of Accounting and Information Systems at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration with a major in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Additionally, he earned an MBA in Finance from Virginia Tech and a Bachelor of Commerce with a focus on Financial Accounting and Auditing from the University of Bombay, India. His research interests include examining decision making in accounting and auditing contexts using behavioral decision theory. He seeks to understand judgment and decision making within these fields to improve real-world decision making. Professor Bhattacharjee’s research has been published in several top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Behavioral Research in Accounting, and Accounting Horizons. He has received awards including The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) award for Access to Audit Personnel. His teaching interests encompass undergraduate and graduate courses in financial accounting, management accounting, cost accounting, and management control systems. He has taught in both the MBA and Executive MBA programs. Prior to Virginia Tech, he was on the faculty at Suffolk University, where he received the Dean’s Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence. At Virginia Tech, he has been honored with the Warren Holtzman Outstanding Educator Award and the MBA Teaching and Service Award.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Accounting
• Psychology
• Business
• Law
• Social psychology
• Marketing
• Finance
• Public relations
• Management
• Economics

Selected publications

• Beyond the Message: How Client Response Time and Message Fluency Impact Staff Auditor Judgment

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY Staff auditors frequently email clients to conduct evidence inquiry. A recent article by Bhattacharjee, Moreno, and Wright (2023) investigates whether two characteristics of email communication, client response time and message processing fluency, influence staff auditors’ judgments. The current article summarizes the study for practitioners, which finds that auditor skepticism is reduced when the client provides a more fluent email response compared with a less fluent response in a moderate response time. In addition, results show auditor skepticism is reduced when the client provides a more fluent email response in a moderate response time than an immediate response time. Implications for practice as well as practitioner and audit firm takeaways are discussed. Data Availability: Data are available upon request. JEL Classifications: M42.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Auditing from a Distance: The Impact of Remote Auditing and Supervisor Monitoring on Analytical Procedures Judgments

  The Accounting Review · 2024 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Accounting
  • Business

  ABSTRACT As remote auditing remains widespread, the profession is concerned that decreased auditor-client interactions and remote supervision challenges can reduce audit quality. In response, some firms have increased supervisor monitoring of remote auditors. We experimentally examine how two key remote audit factors, the spatial distance between auditors and clients and the frequency of supervisor monitoring, influence auditors’ judgments in creative tasks. We predict and find that working remotely facilitates auditors’ higher-level cognition that enhances creative hypothesis generation and improves decision quality when uncovering a seeded error if monitored less frequently than more frequently. More frequent monitoring constrains auditors, which squashes effort and creativity, diminishing the benefits of working remotely. Working onsite at the client location reduces the sense of psychological distance, thereby diminishing the difference between monitoring frequencies. These findings have implications for audit practice as working remotely can enhance performance on creative problem-solving tasks, but only when monitored less frequently.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Does an Audit Committee That Encourages Perspective Taking Impact Auditor and Client Judgments During Accounting Disagreements?

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2024-10-25 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY We summarize the published study “The Influence of Perspective Taking Encouraged by the Audit Committee on Auditor and Client Judgments during Accounting Disputes” (Bhattacharjee, Moreno, and Pyzoha 2020), which examines the impact of an audit committee (AC) that assists in a disagreement by encouraging the auditor and client to consider their counterpart’s perspective throughout a multiple-stage resolution process. The authors find that an AC that encourages perspective taking compared with an AC that does not leads to a higher likelihood of agreement between the auditor and the client. The AC’s approach continues to impact the parties’ behavior after the AC provides a resolution recommendation. The findings have important implications for practitioners, policymakers, and regulators regarding the critical role of the AC in disagreement resolution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Role of Board Financial Monitoring Strength and Donor Pressure in Nonprofit Auditors’ Assessment of Changes in Program Expense Allocations

  Auditing A Journal of Practice & Theory · 2023-06-08

  articleSenior author

  SUMMARY Nonprofits face inherent risks from both donor pressure to increase program spending and a high propensity for reporting errors. Simultaneously, in contrast to for-profit settings, limitations of nonprofit governance can raise auditors’ concerns about a board’s effectiveness as a control mechanism. We experimentally examine how a nonprofit board’s stronger and weaker monitoring strength influences auditors’ assessments of a client’s program expense allocations under conditions of higher and lower donor pressure to increase program spending. Auditors assess management’s expense allocations as more appropriate, and document fewer risk factors, only when board financial monitoring is strong and donor pressure is lower. Further, auditors rely on strong boards to reduce errors, but not intentional misstatements related to management’s allocation of functional expenses. These findings suggest that, in contrast to how auditors use for-profit governance, auditors may question the ability of even strong nonprofit boards to mitigate instances of intentional functional expense allocation misreporting.

  PublisherDOI

• Incorporating Social Values for Cooperation in Energy Trading and Balancing Research

  Applied innovation and technology management · 2023-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Persuasive Response Sequence and Consistency When Information Technology Service Providers Address Auditor-Identified Issues in System and Organization Control 2 Reports

  Journal of Information Systems · 2022 · 2 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Marketing

  ABSTRACT We examine how an IT service provider’s persuasive communication related to SOC2 report findings influences management’s (i.e., user-entities’) perceptions of the outsourced services. Within SOC2 reports, service providers can attempt to influence management’s impressions of auditor-identified issues and, due to the report’s limited audience, also follow up with management about these issues. Using dual-process theories of persuasion, we predict the type of persuasion used by a service provider in a SOC2 report (contend or concede), and its consistency with follow-up persuasive appeals (contend or concede), will influence management’s perceptions of the services provided. In an experiment, only when the service provider first contends the auditor’s findings does a follow-up concession (rather than contention) result in more favorable perceptions. Persuasion tactics also influence management’s processing of risk factors, which impact their trust in the service. Thus, IT service providers’ initial and follow-up persuasive communications influence management’s assessment of SOC2 auditor-identified issues. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available upon request.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Client Response Time and Message Processing Fluency on Staff Auditor Judgment

  Auditing A Journal of Practice & Theory · 2022-10-14 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY Staff auditors frequently email clients to conduct evidence inquiry. However, little research has examined how characteristics of email communication impact auditors’ assessments of evidence. We experimentally investigate whether two characteristics of email communication, client response time and message processing fluency, influence auditors’ judgments. We find that auditor skepticism is reduced when the client provides a more fluent email response compared with a less fluent response in a moderate response time. In addition, auditor skepticism is reduced when the client provides a more fluent email response in a moderate response time versus in an immediate response time. Our results suggest that if client management takes their time to respond to an auditor’s email, then this may reduce auditor skepticism, especially if the client composes a fluent response. These findings have audit quality implications because the same client information provided via email can be perceived differently depending on other client communication characteristics.

  PublisherDOI

• How Do Client-Provided Benchmarking Data Impact Auditors' Evaluations of Level 3 Fair Value Discount Rate Assumptions?

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2021-11-16 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY This article summarizes “The Impact of Benchmark Set Composition on Auditors' Level 3 Fair Value Judgments” by Bhattacharjee, Moreno, and Wright (2019), which examines how auditors' judgments of the reasonableness of a client's discount rate for a Level 3 investment are impacted by client-provided benchmarks. In two experiments, the authors find that audit seniors' and managers' judgments of a client-preferred discount rate for an investment are inappropriately influenced by the set of peer companies provided by the client as justification. Managers are less susceptible than seniors, likely due to highly developed knowledge structures. Results suggest that providing structured audit guidance to the seniors for conducting analyses somewhat reduces but does not eliminate this effect. The study's findings have implications for other auditing contexts using benchmarking such as goodwill impairment, inventory obsolescence, and valuation estimates and for audit firms when auditing complex estimates and determining staffing of audit engagements.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Impact of Auditor Behavior and Audit Committee Questioning on Non-GAAP Reporting Decisions

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-03-04

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  While external auditors’ contentious or cooperative behavior during discussions over subjective GAAP reporting choices can influence management’s GAAP reporting decisions, this behavior may also impact managers’ subsequent non-GAAP reporting. Additionally, recent calls for audit committees to go beyond GAAP and question non-GAAP disclosures may impact non-GAAP reporting. We experimentally examine if contentious or cooperative auditor behavior and audit committee questioning influence managers’ non-GAAP disclosure choices. Senior executives are less likely to make non-GAAP earnings exclusions, and present non-GAAP earnings less prominently earlier in the earnings release, when the auditor is contentious during GAAP discussions and/or when an audit committee questions both GAAP and non-GAAP disclosures. Auditor contentiousness likely enhances subsequent disclosure hesitancy, while anticipated non-GAAP questioning generates more thorough disclosure analysis, both curbing non-GAAP reporting. Managers select more aggressive non-GAAP reporting choices only absent both auditor contention and active audit committee questioning of non-GAAP financials. Thus, certain governance mechanisms can individually and jointly curb aggressive non-GAAP reporting.

  Publisher

• Auditors' Use of Formal Advice from Internal Firm Subject Matter Experts: The Impact of Advice Quality and Advice Awareness on Auditors' Judgments

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2020-05-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  SUMMARY When subject matter experts are consulted during an audit, the quality of the expert's advice depends upon their ability to fully understand and incorporate client-specific facts into their advice. PCAOB inspection reports suggest that auditors are neglecting to perform the required work to assess the quality of experts' recommendations. This article summarizes a recent study by Wright and Bhattacharjee (2018) examining how receiving expert advice of different levels of quality and the timing of communication making auditors aware of the eventual use an expert, impact auditors' judgments. Auditors who were aware that an expert was going to be used put forth more effort before receiving the expert's advice, and were less in agreement with management's position, than auditors who were unaware. Upon receiving the advice, aware auditors were more discerning and accurate than unaware auditors, providing that the timing and communication of consulting decisions affect auditors' assessments of expert advice.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kimberly K. Moreno

  Universidad del Noreste

  36 shared

• Mario J. Maletta

  Universidad del Noreste

  9 shared

• Nicole S. Wright

  6 shared

• J. Owen Brown

  Baylor University

  4 shared

• Jonathan S. Pyzoha

  Miami University

  4 shared

• John R. Lauck

  Louisiana Tech University

  3 shared

• Tracey J. Riley

  Suffolk University

  2 shared

• Thomas Kida

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  2 shared

Labs

• Accounting and Information SystemsPI

Awards & honors

• The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) award for Access to Audit…
• Dean’s Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence at Suffolk…
• Warren Holtzman Outstanding Educator Award at Virginia Tech
• MBA Teaching and Service Award at Virginia Tech