The Relative Importance of Management Fraud Risk Factors

In an exploratory study, we report how 140 auditors rate the relative importance of 25 risk factors (red flags) identified in SAS No. 82. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to produce a decision model for each subject, and mean decision models are reported for groups of subjects. The results indicate that management characteristics and influence over the control environment red flags were approximately twice as important as operating and financial stability characteristics red flags and about four times as important as industry conditions red flags. The three single most important red flags account for almost 40 percent of the total decision weight. A particularly interesting finding is that the mean decision models of 43 Big 5 auditors, 50 regional/localfirm auditors, and 47 internal auditors were not significantly different from each other.