Valuing errors for learning: espouse or enact?

This study aims to investigate how organisations can discourage covering up and instead encourage learning from errors through a supportive learning from error climate. In explaining professionals’ learning from error behaviour, this study distinguishes between espoused (verbally expressed) and enacted (behaviourally expressed) values with respect to learning from errors.

As part of mandatory training sessions, 150 early-career auditors completed an online questionnaire measuring error orientation and help-seeking behavior after making an error as attitude- and behavior-based measures, next to measuring perceived organizational learning from error climate. Multiple mediation analysis is used to explore direct and indirect effects.

Covering up errors was negatively and learning from errors positively related to an organisation’s learning from error climate. For covering up, this relationship is an indirect one – espoused and enacted values need to match. For learning from errors, this relationship is direct: espoused values positively relate to learning behaviour after errors.

By designing a supportive learning from error climate in which members at all hierarchical levels role-model learning from errors behaviour, organisations can actively discourage covering up and encourage learning from errors.

This study applies the theory of espoused versus enacted values to learning from error using a triangulation of measures in an understudied research setting: auditing.