Early research found that audit experience improves performance (see, for example,Ashton
and Brown 1980). Subsequent work has shown that more experienced auditors do not always
outperform less experienced auditors (Libby and Luft 1993). Rather than focusing on the amount of
generic audit experience, researchers identified the importance of knowledge gained from
experiences within specific contexts in enhancing auditor performance (Libby and Luft 1993;Libby
1995). Knowledge can be gained from training or on-the-job experience. A distinction is therefore
made between general domain knowledge, gained by all auditors, and sub-specialty knowledge,
gained only through practice and feedback in a particular domain (see, for example,Be´dard 1989;
Davis and Solomon 1989; Ashton 1991).