<![CDATA[Purpose– This study examines how artificial intelligence and auditors' professional attributes, competence, independence, and ethics, are associated with perceived audit quality among external auditors in public accounting firms in Jakarta and Bogor, Indonesia.Methods – Data were collected from 109 external auditors via a cross-sectional survey and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. Beyond assessing the measurement and structural models, the analysis incorporated PLSpredict to examine predictive capability and Importance Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) to identify managerial priorities for improving perceived audit quality.Findings – Auditor competence, artificial intelligence, auditor ethics, and auditor independence are all positively and significantly associated with perceived audit quality, with competence showing the largest standardized coefficient, followed by ethics, artificial intelligence, and independence. The IPMA results further identify auditor competence as the construct with the highest importance, while auditor ethics shows a comparatively larger performance gap.Research implications – Public accounting firms should pair AI adoption with continuous investment in auditor competence, ethical standards, and professional independence to support sustainable perceived audit quality.Originality – This study advances the emerging literature on AI-enabled auditing by demonstrating that technological capability and auditor professionalism are simultaneously and positively associated with perceived audit quality within a unified analytical framework, offering a more comprehensive understanding of these factors among external auditors in Indonesian public accounting firms.]]>
