Audit Leadership Diversity and Audit Quality

We examine whether a culture emphasizing diversity in accounting firms, as embodied by the diversity of local offices’ audit leaders, influences audit quality. An organizational culture that emphasizes diverse perspectives and experiences can have a permeating influence on the execution of all local audits. We develop a composite measure of audit partner diversity within offices by capturing and combining variations among the following characteristics: gender, age, religiosity, ethnicity, nationality, and education. Our results indicate that greater diversity among office audit partners is associated with higher audit quality among office clientele, incremental to characteristics of the client, the geographic area, the audit office, and the engagement partner. These findings underscore the importance of an audit office culture that values diversity and provide important practical implications.