Non-specialist auditors work on a range of tasks in a variety of industry settings, giving them
the opportunity to accumulate both industry and task knowledge from that experience. While the
knowledge gained from industry- and task-based experience has been found to enhance auditor
performance, no previous research has specifically investigated their relative benefits using
non-specialist auditors. Prior research has found that industry specialists can benefit from their
specialization in the absence of task-based experience. Moroney (2007) found that industry
specialists without task-based experience can outperform other auditors who have neither industrynor
task-based experience in the task. This finding suggests that industry knowledge provides a
context within which auditors can perform relatively well on tasks unfamiliar to them (Biggs et al.
1993). We expect that industry-based experience will have a greater impact on the performance of
non-specialist auditors than task-based experience.