The accounting profession continues to face a talent shortage. In addition, the skills and demands of accountants continue to evolve as technology changes. At the same time, many autism spectrum disorder (ASD) persons remain unemployed or underemployed. Companies, including the Big 4, have begun hiring programs looking at a diverse set of individuals, including ASD persons. General anecdotes suggest ASD persons are thriving in terms of innovation, efficiency, and productivity. While neurotypical (NT) persons have been shown in multiple studies to rely on simple heuristics, which reduce judgment quality, we argue that there are neuropsychological differences in visual perception and attention that play a vital role in why ASD persons may be less susceptible to heuristics and biases; hence, increasing judgment quality. This paper presents an interdisciplinary research framework that adapts the human information processor model of cognition to bring together the judgment and decision-making, autism, and neuropsychological literatures to focus on areas where ASD persons may have judgment-related advantages over NT persons. We discuss the framework and present example research questions for two areas where ASD accountants are performing tasks: cybersecurity and software development. Our framework presents a guide for future empirical research where accounting academics can lead an interdisciplinary effort to support company inclusion programs of ASD persons and, more broadly, of neurodivergent persons.

中文翻译：

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弥合人才差距：会计和信息系统中自闭症谱系障碍患者的跨学科研究框架


会计行业继续面临人才短缺的问题。此外，随着技术的变化，会计师的技能和需求也在不断发展。与此同时，许多自闭症谱系障碍 （ASD） 患者仍然失业或就业不足。包括 4 大公司在内的公司已经开始招聘计划，关注不同的个人，包括 ASD 患者。一般的轶事表明，ASD 患者在创新、效率和生产力方面蓬勃发展。虽然多项研究表明神经典型 （NT） 人依赖于简单的启发式方法，这会降低判断质量，但我们认为，视觉感知和注意力存在神经心理学差异，这在 ASD 患者可能不太容易受到启发式和偏见的影响方面起着至关重要的作用;因此，提高判断质量。本文提出了一个跨学科的研究框架，该框架采用了人类信息处理器认知模型，将判断和决策、自闭症和神经心理学文献结合在一起，以关注 ASD 患者可能比 NT 患者具有判断相关优势的领域。我们讨论了该框架，并提供了 ASD 会计师执行任务的两个领域的示例研究问题：网络安全和软件开发。我们的框架为未来的实证研究提供了指南，会计学者可以领导跨学科的努力，以支持 ASD 患者以及更广泛的神经多样性患者的公司包容性计划。