Confronted with such a predicament, auditors have to arouse and/or maintain intact
auditees’ desire to cooperate. This is an implicit obligation of the audit practice—an
operational imperative. With the aim of achieving this result, audit team members strive to cajole their hosts personally (through good manners and friendliness) and professionally (through discretion and services). At both levels (personal and professional), they try not to irritate but rather to satisfy their ‘‘clients,’’ whose interests seemingly have to be taken into account. When the moment comes to report and negotiate the correction of detected errors, integrative negotiation strategies are favored, the recourse to brutal enforcement options being avoided as much as possible. Here, the objective is to maintain the cooperation of auditees in the future.