ABSTRACT
Professional accounting guidance recommends that interviewers attend to deception detection in audit interviews. Prior studies suggest that interviewers are poor detectors of a stranger's deceptions. This study assesses whether behavioral baselining (acquiring familiarity with truth-telling style prior to initiating an interview of an unfamiliar interviewee), a recommended procedure for investigative interviews, improves the ability to detect the deceptions of an unfamiliar interviewee in accounting interviews. In the present study, interviewers conducted five preliminary interviews of a truth-telling interviewee prior to the focal accounting interview. This exposure to the interviewee's truth telling increased the accuracy of detecting truths as opposed to lies, suggesting that behavioral baselining of truth telling aided the detection of primarily truth telling. These findings suggest that behavioral baselining may not facilitate the auditor's objective, that is, the detection of lies.
Data Availability: Confidentiality agreements with participants, written with the assistance of human subjects committees, prevent the sharing of data with others.
