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By drawing on Belief Perseverance Theory (BPT), this study investigates the pre- and post-perceptions of the First Accounting Course (FAC) differentiating between accounting and non-accounting students in a virtual learning setting at a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) university, and explains why students' perceptions have formed.

Adopting a case study approach, this study employs quantitative (anonymous questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methods.

Responses from 142 financial accounting students indicate that non-accounting majors generally changed the students' perceptions significantly at the end of the semester, whereas students' accounting counterparts had relatively stable perceptions. This study also finds that a large number of non-accounting students perceived the benefits of taking the FAC and generally have less negative perceptions of the accounting profession, which supports the notion that non-accounting students evaluated discrediting information to reassess non-accounting students pre-established perceptions.

This study has several implications as follows: for the accounting education literature on how FAC assists students in changing students' perceptions through the lens of BPT, for professional accounting bodies to find ways to promote accounting careers for students and for educators to increase students’ desire for accounting study and profession.

The findings from this study are expected to contribute to GCC society by providing clarifications towards increasing students’ desire for accounting studies and professions.

This study aims to investigate whether accounting-related litigation is associated with a break in the client’s earnings string and the auditor’s response to a break in the earnings string.

The authors use regression models on a sample of publicly-traded USA companies with earnings strings.

The authors find that clients’ earnings string breaks are associated with increased accounting litigation risk and audit fees. The results are more prevalent for larger breaks.

The findings suggest auditors anticipate string breaks by clients which implies that audit fee research should consider earnings string characteristics in the fee models.

The auditor’s access to private information allows them to anticipate string breaks and potential increase in litigation risk.

An earnings string break represents a convergence of concerns highly relevant to the auditor: more users relying on the financial statements with greater expectations, increased likelihood of losses to those users, an environment where the likelihood of misstatement may increase, and explicitly stated professional responsibilities in response to the latter. Despite that, and a rich earnings string literature, prior studies have not directly examined auditors’ response to a client’s string break.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of audit committee financial experts on the risk of financial corruption in public companies.

A time-lagged, matched-pairs sample of 352 corporations was utilized to test the study's hypotheses (176 financially corrupt firms plus 176 compliant firms). To uncover financially corrupt firms, 2,895 Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases from the Securities and Exchange Commission were thoroughly evaluated.

The results show that financial experts on audit committees generally increased financial corruption. However, the impact was reversed when audit committees had three or more financial experts, showing that having at least three financial experts reduced financial corruption.

The study's findings call into question the long-held practice of appointing at least one financial expert to audit committees. This study offers a novel approach to improve corporate oversight and reduce financial corruption by having at least three financial experts on audit committees.