Exploring How Professional Skepticism Mediates the Impact of Ethics and Audit Risk on Opinion Accuracy

This study investigates the dynamic interplay among audit risk, auditor ethics, and audit opinion accuracy, emphasizing professional skepticism as a crucial mediating construct. The primary aim is to examine how audit risk and auditor ethics influence audit opinion accuracy by elucidating the role of professional skepticism as an intervening behavioral mechanism. Consequently, the study addresses a central research question regarding the behavioral pathways that shape audit judgment accuracy. Using a quantitative, questionnaire-based design, data were collected from 101 auditors at public accounting firms in DKI Jakarta, Indonesia, via convenience sampling and analyzed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The empirical results indicate that both audit risk and auditor ethics significantly enhance audit opinion accuracy. Professional skepticism independently improves judgment quality and serves as a significant mediator between auditor ethics and audit opinion accuracy, whereas the effect of audit risk remains direct and unmediated. The study’s novelty, grounded in agency theory, reconceptualizes professional skepticism as a dynamic mechanism linking ethics to outcomes, advancing behavioral auditing beyond traditional direct-effects models. Practically, audit firms should reinforce ethical frameworks, training programs, and quality control systems that explicitly cultivate professional skepticism. Regulators and professional bodies are encouraged to integrate behavioral auditing and skeptical judgment into auditor education to further enhance audit quality. Keywords: Professional Skepticism; Auditor Ethics; Audit Risk; Audit Opinion Accuracy; Audit Quality.