Sean Hillison

Sean Hillison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master’s in Accounting, and a Bachelor’s in Accounting from the University of Florida. Prior to academia, he worked for nine years at Ernst & Young as an audit senior manager, serving SEC registrants and private equity firms.

His research focuses on judgment and decision-making in auditing and accounting, particularly addressing workplace dynamics, fraud detection, and professional ethics. Key topics include remote auditing impacts, client incivility effects, and auditor judgment under stress. His work has been published in top journals like the Journal of Accounting Research and The Accounting Review.

• Awards: 2021 AAA Auditing Section Best Paper Award (with Ph.D. student), Center for Audit Quality Grant.
• Editorial Role: Serves on the editorial board of Current Issues in Auditing.

His career bridges academic research and industry practice, emphasizing practical solutions for audit challenges. Ongoing projects explore audit team resilience, technological disruptions in auditing, and ethical decision-making frameworks.