Abstract
Research explores the impact of accountability and the initial view of a reviewer on the evidence evaluation processes of auditors. Audit seniors completed 2 audit tasks, an unstructured going concern assessment and a semi-structured internal control evaluation. The research investigated whether accountability would influence the perceived importance of positive or negative items of evidence. Overall, accountability did not influence the perceived importance of the evidence items. However, accountable participants rated positive and irrelevant evidence items as more important than did unaccountable participants in the unstructured task. Possible reasons for the results are discussed. In addition, issues relating to accountability and evidence evaluation in forensic auditing and fraud auditing are presented.