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The purpose of this study is to identify a psychological profile for public accounting firm partners who are likely to place the partnership and client shareholder at risk. Proprietary data from an executive counseling firm provided a unique opportunity to compare two groups of partners: those identified by their senior partners as placing the firm at risk (n=31) and those not so identified (n=64). The groups were compared using psychological measures, lifestyle measures, personal measures, and work history variables. Results found no significant measurable difference between the audit partners who were identified as posing a risk and those not so identified. This suggests that specific factors cannot lead a partner to engage in risky behaviors, but rather several, in combination, may be necessary. Implications for research include learning more about concepts such as resistance to temptation, motivation, and rationalization. Implications for practice are to focus on structuring business practices to provide early warning signs and minimize opportunities to engage in risky behavior. Continued and increased diligence in the client screening and client continuation and review process remain essential for best practices.

Auditor independence is a construct that has been, and continues to be, connected to the credibility of financial statements and the effective functioning of capital markets. Given the important role assigned to independence by various regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its appearance as a recurring issue of concern and debate is unsurprising. Concerns about auditor independence in the context of various accounting scandals, such as Enron and WorldCom, contributed to the enactment of changes in the institutional arrangements for regulating auditors and renewed efforts to enhance auditor independence. Rather than continuing with perhaps futile efforts to achieve independence, I argue that we need to re-evaluate the utility of this concept as a guide to regulating audit practices. Independence, with its connotations of an unachievable autonomy and linkage of professionalism to an unobservable mind-state, may hinder, rather than aid, the audit purpose for SEC registrants – the mitigation of aggressive financial reporting. Independence as autonomy is impossible within an environment in which management pays for the audit, hires and fires the auditor, and is the primary contact for auditors. Rather than searching for ways to make the auditor “more” independent, I discuss changing the focus of regulatory attention to an open examination of and emphasis upon the relationality of auditing practice. This change in perspective requires us to examine the various relationships in which auditors are embedded and to assess whether these are more or less likely to encourage the auditor/audit firm to fulfill the purpose of an audit. I specifically explore three categories of relationships – relationships with the auditee, relationships with the audit committee and relationships with the audit firm. I also examine how this focus on relationships may contribute to our thinking about policy decisions relevant within the current audit environment, including assessing the likely impacts of consulting and personal relationships with auditees, ways to put a “face” on the public and assessing the compensation and marketing practices of accounting firms.

The agency view of corporate governance requires effective monitoring to align the interests of the agent with those of the principal. This paper suggests that conventional proposals to reform corporate governance through legislation, codes of best practice, and the like, are necessary, but underestimate the pressures which reputational intermediaries face from inevitable conflicts of interest and bias. Various strands of the literature on corporate governance, cognitive research and behavioural economics are integrated to shed light on questions regarding the independence of boards of directors and external auditors.

This research examines the effect of auditors’ personal debt on their audit decision making. We developed two different background scenarios that vary the level of the auditor’s personal debt. While one scenario indicated that the partner lived a modest lifestyle and was relatively free of debt, the other indicated that the partner lived an expensive lifestyle and had considerable personal debt. Our data indicate that auditors receiving the higher personal indebtedness scenario were more likely to believe that the auditor in the case study would sign-off on the audit without doing any additional work. We also found that the propensity to believe that the auditor in the case study would sign-off on the audit without doing any additional work decreased as the participants’ rank within the firm increased. Our research documents that a partner’s level of indebtedness could influence the participant’s audit decisions.

The sociology of professions literature has theorized that the professions are undergoing a dramatic transformation from being traditional professions to “entrepreneurial professions” populated by “knowledge workers.” In part, this transformation is associated with the commodification and commercialization of professional endeavor.

Our purpose is to enlist the processual ordering perspective to examine the ongoing transformation of the Big 5 (and following the collapse of Arthur Andersen during our field study)/4 public accounting firms to become entrepreneurial firms populated by global knowledge experts. More specifically, we focus on the inter-play of power and meta-power across three moments of the social construction process – externalization, objectivation, and internalization – through which the ethos of entrepreneurialism is being socially constructed within these firms, their individual members, and in the public accounting profession. Finally, we explore impressions gleaned from our qualitative, naturalistic field study.

Mandatory auditor firm rotation (mandatory rotation) has been a controversial issue in the United States for many decades. Mandatory rotation has been considered at various times as a means of improving auditor independence. For example, in the United States, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has considered mandatory rotation as a solution to the independence problem (PCAOB, 2011) and the European Parliament approved legislation that will require mandatory rotation in the near future (Council of European Union, 2014). The concept of implementing a mandatory rotation policy has been encouraged by some constituents of audited financial statements and rejected by other constituents of audited financial statements. Although there are apparent pros and cons of such a policy, the developmental process of such a policy in this country has not necessarily been an open-democratic, objective process. Universal mandatory rotation may or may not be the ideal solution; however, an open-democratic, objective process is needed to facilitate the development of a solution that considers the needs of all major stakeholders of audited financial statements – not simply accounting firms and public companies, but also investors. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine key issues relating to mandatory rotation and to encourage and stimulate future research and ongoing dialogue regarding this issue, in spite of efforts by certain constituents to silence the issue. This paper provides an overview of the various reasons, including practical, theoretical, political, and self-motivated reasons, why a mandatory rotation policy has not been implemented in the United States in order to address the potential conflict of interest between the auditor and client. This paper will also discuss how some deliberations of mandatory rotation have been flawed. The paper concludes with a summary of key issues along with two approaches for regulators, policy makers, and academics to consider as ways to improve the process and address auditor independence. The authors are not advocating for any specific solution; however, we are advocating for a more objective, unified approach and for the dialogue regarding auditor rotation to continue.