A substantial body of research has found that industry specialization impacts auditor judgment
on a range of tasks. Industry specialists demonstrate less conservative assessment of inherent risk
levels (Taylor 2000), more accurate non-error frequency knowledge (Solomon et al. 1999), more
effective detection of seeded errors during the review process (Owhoso et al. 2002), more accurate
assessment of audit risk (Low 2004), and a greater ability to interpret and complete partial cue
patterns (Hammersley 2006). In these papers it was industry knowledge that was used to predict
superior performance across a range of tasks. In each case an auditor’s industry knowledge was
expected to provide the context for superior auditor performance.