Rate My Professor Allen Blay

Dr. Allen Blay serves as Department Chair and EY Professor of Accounting in the Department of Accounting at Florida State University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Business. He received his B.S.B.A. in Accounting (1993), M.Acc. (1993), and Ph.D. in Accounting (2000) from the University of Florida. A licensed CPA, Blay began his career as a Staff and Senior Auditor at Hacker, Johnson, Cohen and Grieb from 1993 to 1995, focusing on financial institutions. He then joined academia as Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside’s Anderson Graduate School of Management (2000-2007). In 2007, he moved to Florida State University as Assistant Professor (2007-2013), was promoted to Associate Professor (2013-2021), and assumed his current roles in 2021.

Blay’s academic interests center on auditing, including auditor decision-making, corporate financial distress, auditor independence, going-concern reporting, and fraud brainstorming. He has published extensively in premier outlets such as The Accounting Review, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Business Ethics. Key publications include “Fraud Brainstorming Group Composition in Auditing: The Persuasive Power of a Skeptical Minority” with McAllister and Kadous (The Accounting Review, 2021), which earned the American Accounting Association Issues in Accounting Education Best Paper Award (2018); “The Effect of an Auditor Identity Disclosure Requirement on Audit Quality” with Gooden, Mellon, and Stevens (Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, 2019); and “The Auditor’s Going-Concern Opinion as a Communication of Risk” with Geiger (Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, 2011). Blay co-authored the 8th edition of Auditing & Assurance Services (2020) with Louwers et al. His teaching excellence is recognized by the Florida State University Beta Alpha Psi Professor of the Year Award (2015), Undergraduate Teaching Award (2014), and multiple nominations for distinguished teaching awards. Blay contributes to the profession as Editor of Issues in Accounting Education (2019-present), on editorial boards of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory and The International Journal of Accounting, and through service on the AICPA Professional Skepticism Task Force and its auditing and attestation subcommittee (2012-2015). He also authored a white paper on introducing data analytics in auditing education.