注册会计师职级与审计质量

The Impact of CPA’s Position on Audit Quality

本文以会计师事务所审计项目为依托,研究签字注册会计师职级对审计质量的影响。研究结果表明,签字注册会计师职级越高,对被审计单位的盈余管理出具非标审计意见的概率越高,且这种效果主要发生在会计师事务所承接客户业务年限较短的上市公司中,随着审计年限的增加,职级的作用逐渐消失。从发生财务重述的概率来看,签字注册会计师职级越高,发生财务重述的概率越小。进一步研究表明,当控制了注册会计师的从业经验后,上述结论依然存在;此外,尽管职级高的注册会计师能够提升审计质量,然而在人员选派时,并未对风险更高的公司分配职级更高的签字注册会计师。本文的研究对于会计师事务所人员配置及对会计师事务所的监管都具有重要意义。

Based on the audit projects of Certified Public Accountant(CPA)firms,this paper studies the impact of the position of signed CPA on audit quality.The results show that the higher the position of the signed CPA is,the higher probability of issuing qualified audit opinion on the earnings management of client firms,and this effect mainly occurs when the audit tenure is shorter.As the audit tenure becomes longer,the impact of position weakens.Considering the probability of financial restatement,the higher the CPA’s position is,the lower the probability of financial restatement occurs.Further research shows that the above conclusions are still valid after controlling the CPA’s experience.In addition,although CPA with higher position can improve audit quality,CPA with lower position is not necessarily assigned to clients with higher risks.This study offers some implications to the allocation of human resources in accounting firms as well as to the supervision of CPA firms.