Subjects were 109 partners and 71 senior managers from the six largest public accounting
firms in the U.S. Partners and managers averaged 19 and 8.5 years of audit
experience, respectively. Self-reported data indicated that experimental groups were homogeneous
across relevant demographic data. Task-specific experience, measured by the
percentage of clients facing going-concern problems, averaged 6 percent over a five-year
period and was uniform among the experimental groups.