Even intentions of the most idealistic auditors are limited by non supportive organizations. The auditor is continually plagued with difficult cost benefit decisions regarding how much effort should be expended to determine the accuracy of presented data. Audit firms use strict time budgets as a technical control for the pricing of engagements, allocation of resources, and ex post evaluation. However, these budgets have substantial shortcomings. The amount and quality of time that a staff member uses are often unobserved and not easily monitored.
Individuals frequently work in isolation.
As a result of their study, Kelley and Margheim suggested that auditing firms improve their monitoring the extent of dysfunctional behaviors, de-emphasize time budget attainment pressures, and find mechanisms for improving time requirement estimations. She also mentioned problems due to surreptitiously shifting extra hours from time-consuming jobs to less demanding ones. When confronting conflict partners and managers are more likely to conform to firm norms rather than to professional standards or moral principals. This weakens auditors' scrupulousness to insure faithful reporting. Lastly, there is a common auditing firm practice which limits promotion of ethical behavior.