Audit Quality: The Perceptions of Audit-Committee Chairpersons and Audit Partners.

This paper describes a study in which Fortune 500 audit-committee chairpersons rated 15 factors according to the items' perceived effect on audit quality. Also elicited were Big Eight CPA-firm partners' views of chairpersons' audit-quality perceptions. Our results indicate that audit-team factors, such as the level of partner/manager attention given to the audit, are perceived by audit-committee chairpersons to have a greater effect on audit quality than such audit-firm factors as the relative significance of total professional fees paid to the audit firm, and that, with only a few exceptions, Big-Eight CPA-firm partners are knowledgeable about such perceptions. The implications of these results for practice and future research are discussed.