Innovative accounting interviewing: A comparison of real and virtual accounting interviewers

Author ORCID Identifier

Matthew Pickard:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4614-0060

Publication Title

Accounting Review

ISSN

00014826

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Recent technological advances make it possible to create automated virtual interviewers, called embodied conversational agents (ECAs). We study how an ECA compares to a human interviewer in three experiments. In experiment 1, we show that two theoretically motivated factors—making the ECA facially and vocally similar to the interviewee—result in the ECA performing similarly to or better than human interviewers for six antecedents of disclosure quality. In two additional experiments, we show that employees are, on average, 21 to 32 percent more likely to disclose violating internal controls to an ECA than to a human, even if the human interviewer has significant interviewing experience. These findings contribute to the ECA design literature by showing that similarity-enhancing features of ECAs increase the antecedents of disclosure. The findings also contribute to the accounting literature by demonstrating that ECA technology can increase the scope of interviewing in accounting without reducing interview quality.

First Page

339

Last Page

366

Publication Date

1-29-2020

DOI

10.2308/TAR-2017-0235

Keywords

Embodied conversational agents, Internal audit, Interviewing, Self-disclosure, Virtual agents

Department

Department of Accountancy

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