About

Joseph Brazel is the Jenkins Distinguished Professor of Accounting and a University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in auditing and assurance services. His research focuses on professional skepticism, fraud detection, data analytics, non-financial measures, investor and CFO responses to fraud red flags, fraud brainstorming, and judgment and decision-making in auditing. Dr. Brazel has published in prominent journals such as The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, and Contemporary Accounting Research, and is a regular contributor at Forbes.com. He has received multiple awards for his contributions to accounting research, including the AAA/Deloitte Wildman Medal Award in 2014, the Notable Contribution to the Auditing Literature Award in 2018, and the Best Paper Award from Behavioral Research in Accounting in 2020. Dr. Brazel has been engaged by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board to synthesize research related to professional skepticism and has served on various research teams and committees within the accounting community. Prior to his academic career, he was an audit manager with Deloitte.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Accounting
• Business
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Epistemology
• Actuarial science
• Data science
• Mathematics
• Positive economics
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• Can Prior Consultations with Specialists Backfire on Auditors?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Inheriting Versus Developing Data Analytic Tests and Auditors’ Professional Skepticism

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2025-09-09 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT As the use of audit data analytic tests (ADA) becomes increasingly established in practice, auditors will often confront situations in which they inherit ADA developed by others, as opposed to developing the ADA themselves. Despite the potential benefits of ADA, inheriting ADA could decrease auditors’ skeptical actions by diminishing their psychological ownership of the ADA. In an experiment where an ADA identifies a fraud red flag, we find that auditors who inherited the ADA are less likely to exercise skeptical actions than those who were personally involved in its development. We then provide evidence that informing auditors who inherit an ADA about the test development activities (e.g., a brief memorandum documenting the ADA's development) mitigates the negative effect of inheriting the ADA. Evidence from mediation analyses suggests that these effects are driven by decreased psychological ownership when auditors inherit the ADA.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inheriting versus Developing Data Analytic Tests and Auditors' Professional Skepticism

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Auditor Use of Benchmarks to Identify Fraud Risks: The Case for Industry Data

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY This article provides a practitioner summary of the research study titled “Auditor use of benchmarks to assess fraud risk: The case for industry data” (Brazel, Jones, and Lian 2024 (BJL)). Auditors perform preliminary analytical procedures to identify risks that financial statements are materially misstated due to fraud. Via a survey of practicing auditors, BJL find that auditors rely heavily on prior year balances and relations within the client’s financial data (e.g., ratios) as benchmarks when developing expectations during planning. Meanwhile, the empirical analyses of BJL reveal that, when identifying fraud risks, benchmarks derived from industry data, nonfinancial measures, and cash flows outperform both prior year balances and relations within the client’s financial data. The industry benchmark was the top performer. The article provides examples to demonstrate an approach that practitioners can use to identify fraud risks via industry data. Data Availability: Contact the authors. JEL Classifications: M40; M41; M42; M48.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Just Ready to be Done! Busy Season Fatigue, Auditor Professional Skepticism, and the Role of Data Visualizations

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Who Rewards Appropriate Levels of Professional Skepticism?

  Current Issues in Auditing · 2025-02-24

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SUMMARY In this article, we provide a practitioner summary of our paper “Who Rewards Appropriate Levels of Professional Skepticism?” (Brazel, Leiby, and Schaefer 2025; hereafter BLS). Recent research suggests that audit supervisors who reward appropriate skeptical behavior, regardless of the outcome, appear to develop staff that are more likely to detect and convey fraud red flags to their superiors. In BLS, we first identify audit supervisors who are more likely to reward appropriate skepticism. We then investigate which personality traits, knowledge, and incentives are associated with supervisors who reward appropriate professional skepticism even when no misstatement is identified. We find that trait skepticism, especially suspending one’s judgment, drives the evaluations of professional skepticism in our setting. Also, we observe that when supervisors believe that their own audit partner will view the skepticism favorably, they “pay it forward” by rewarding their own staff who engage in skepticism. Data Availability: Contact the authors. JEL Classifications: L2; M40; M42; M51.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 433 Creating a CF action plan

  Journal of Cystic Fibrosis · 2025-10-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Can I Get on the Plane? Stakeholder Perceptions of the Audit Report

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Management’s Communication Style When Disclosing Material Weaknesses in Internal Control

  Accounting Horizons · 2024-09-04

  article1st authorCorresponding

  SYNOPSIS Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires management of publicly traded companies to assess and disclose the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR). In our analysis of 200 actual ICFR reports disclosing material weaknesses in internal control, we observe that the most common communication style in our sample is, among other characteristics, a more defensive version of the “reasonable assurance” argument combined with the use of first-person pronouns. In an experiment where we vary management’s communication style with respect to material weakness disclosures, we find that nonprofessional investors are more willing to invest in a company when management uses a version of the “reasonable assurance” argument with fewer characteristics of defensive communication and does not use first-person pronouns. Our findings show a sharp contrast between the communication styles management chooses to use in actual ICFR reports and what we observe experimentally as the most effective communication style. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors upon request. JEL Classifications: M40; M41.

  PublisherDOI

• An Unintended Consequence of Full Population Testing on Auditors' Professional Skepticism

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Keith L. Jones

  University of Kansas

  26 shared

• Tammie J. Schaefer

  University of Missouri–Kansas City

  19 shared

• Christopher P. Agoglia

  11 shared

• Mark F. Zimbelman

  Brigham Young University

  11 shared

• Daniel Ames

  Bryant University

  10 shared

• Jay S. Rich

  Illinois State University

  9 shared

• Richard C. Hatfield

  University of Alabama

  8 shared

• Christine Gimbar

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Accounting

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1992

• M.S., Accounting

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  1987

• B.S., Business Administration

  University of North Carolina at Charlotte

  1985

Awards & honors

• AAA/Deloitte Wildman Medal Award (2014)
• Notable Contribution to the Auditing Literature Award (2018)
• Best Paper Award from Behavioral Research in Accounting (202…