Improving audit judgment and decision making with dual systems cognitive model

This article proposes a dual system cognitive reasoning model to enhance audit judgment and decision making. The model is built on the fact that the total cognitive capacity of an individual comprises two systems of reasoning—System 1 that is unconscious, associative, implicit, more emotional and less controlled, and so forth; and System 2 that is conscious, explicit, deliberate and rule-governed, and so forth. The benefits of the proposed model that integrates these two complementary and compensatory systems are first illustrated with an example in audit planning, and second explained how the model could overcome the deficiencies of heuristics specifically in an audit context.