Auditors who have long served a particular client may establish close relationships with management that impair the auditors’ professional skepticism. A less independent audit committee may also be less likely to challenge or replace an audit firm for diminished professional skepticism.
We add audit firm tenure (the number of consecutive years that the accounting firm has served as the company’s auditor) to the model presented in table 4.16 The variable measuring audit firm tenure is not significant (p > 0.10), but we continue to find that the greater the percentage of affiliated directors on the audit committee, the lower the probability of receiving a going-concern report (p < 0.01)