New research by Chang et. al. (2024) reveals a striking bias in decision-making: People systematically give more weight to what can be quantified, even if it's not the most important factor.
Across 21 experiments with over 23,000 participants, this effect, quantification fixation, was consistently observed.
Numbers don’t just inform decisions: they shape them. Here’s a striking example from the study.
Participants had to choose between two hotels:
✅ Hotel A – Rated 4.6/5 stars, but costs $180 per night
✅ Hotel B – Rated 4.2/5 stars, but costs $150 per night
👉 When only ratings were highlighted, Hotel A was favored.
👉 When only price was emphasised, Hotel B was favored.
Same choice, different emphasis, yet decisions flipped based on what had a number attached.
This bias isn’t just about hotels. It affects every decision we make, including how we choose audit software.
Now, think about how this plays out in audit software selection.
The Illusion of Rationality in Software Decisions
Selecting a Software often benchmarks hard numbers:
Cost per seat
Hours saved
Processing speed
…
What determines success isn’t what looks good on a spreadsheet: it’s what happens when people actually start using the tool.
If an auditor spends their days fighting a rigid, frustrating system, that’s time lost, energy drained, and talent wasted. You wouldn’t hand a builder a spoon and expect them to construct a house, why force auditors into tools that slow them down instead of enabling them?
And perhaps even more important: What about your clients?
A poor user experience doesn’t just frustrate your team; it erodes trust and collaboration. If the software makes every interaction clunky, unclear, or inefficient, it’s not just a workflow issue… it’s a relationship issue. And relationships, unlike software, can’t be easily replaced.
The challenge is that ease of integration, client interaction, and user experience aren’t easily reduced to a single number, so they often get ignored.
🔎 Yet research shows these “soft” factors have massive, hidden financial impact:
Research shows that poor UX is the # 1 reason firms abandon software (Forrester ), while every $1 invested in UX yields up to $100 in ROI (Forrester ROI study ).
A clunky system isn’t just frustrating—it kills efficiency, increases burnout, and leads to higher employee turnover. Companies with top-tier UX outperform competitors by 32% in revenue growth (McKinsey ).
And what about your clients? More than one in three customers will actively consider an alternative service provider after a single bad digital experience (PwC ).
When collaboration tools are unintuitive or rigid, the friction isn’t just internal—it erodes trust and damages relationships. Client retention is 5x cheaper than acquisition (Harvard Business Review ), meaning the real cost of bad UX isn’t just frustration—it’s lost business.
A 5% increase in user retention boosts profits by 25% to 95% (Bain & Company).
Client churn costs 5x more than retention (Harvard Business Review).
Poor usability and process experience is the # 1 reason clients look for an alternative service provider (Forrester Research).
Auditors Are More Prone to This Bias Than Others
And here’s the kicker: Financial auditors, numbers experts, are even more vulnerable to quantification fixation.
People with high numeric fluency (confidence in working with numbers) are more likely to overweight quantifiable metrics and ignore what’s harder to measure.
🚨 So before you sign off on a new software tool, ask yourself:
Will my team feel relieved, or frustrated, after a full day using this tool?
Will my clients experience seamless collaboration, or more back-and-forth confusion?
Will this software empower better work, or just optimize numbers that don’t tell the full story?
💡 Your software is how you interact with your clients. And how you interact with your clients is how you’re perceived. Don’t forget you’re in the people business 😉.
At Alkmist, we don’t just optimize for efficiency; we optimize for experience. Because when software works for auditors, not against them, it strengthens client relationships, drives adoption, and elevates the entire audit process.
💡 If you're interested to see what an audit collaboration platform that puts experience first looks like, let’s talk.
References:
L.W. Chang, E.L. Kirgios, S. Mullainathan, & K.L. Milkman, Does counting change what counts? Quantification fixation biases decision-making, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (46) e2400215121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400215121 (2024).
Bain & Company. (2000). The value of customer retention. Retrieved from https://www.bain.com
Forrester Research. (2022). The ROI of UX: Every $1 spent on UX brings $100 in return. Retrieved from https://www.forrester.com
Forrester Research. (2023). Why bad UX is the #1 reason firms abandon software. Retrieved from https://www.forrester.com
Harvard Business Review. (2021). The cost of customer churn: Why retention is 5x cheaper than acquisition. Retrieved from https://hbr.org
McKinsey & Company. (2018). The business value of design: How good UX drives revenue growth. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com
PwC. (2018). Future of customer experience survey: 32% of customers leave after one bad digital experience. Retrieved from https://www.pwc.com
Reichheld, F. F., & Sasser, W. E., Jr. (1990). Zero defections: Quality comes to services. Harvard Business Review, 68(5), 105–111.
Gupta, S. (2022, December 5). In a downturn, focus on existing customers—not potential ones. Harvard Business Review.
Reichheld, F. F. (2001). Loyalty rules! Harvard Business School Press.