Is the Availability of Qualified Audit Personnel Associated with Office Audit Quality

This study examines how having a higher concentration of more qualified auditors affects office audit outcomes. Specifically, we hypothesize that the availability of more CPA-certified personnel in audit firm offices enhances audit quality primarily due to the audit teams being comprised of and supervised by competent and experienced audit personnel. Consistent with our expectations, the results indicate that offices allocating their audit engagement workload across more qualified personnel deliver higher quality audits as measured by the lower likelihood of restatements and lower performance-adjusted discretionary accruals. Additional analyses reveal that the effect of allocating audit engagement workload across more CPAs on audit quality is more pronounced for busy season audits than non-busy season audits and that our results are not driven by office size. This study contributes to a developing stream of literature investigating audit quality indicators and the determinants of office-level audit quality.