An Attitude to Auditor's Fear of Losing the Client; Emphasizing on Management Performance Audit

The fact that firm’s management in practice has the power of hiring and dismissing the auditor and paying his/her fees, along with recent failures of auditing, has increased critics’ concerns on the possibility of auditor acting based on the management’s interest under pressure. Using the viewpoints of experts of the practice and university and Friedman's test, while analyzing the problem that many working auditors acknowledged it and emphasizing management performance audit, this study attempted to identify the causes and ways of treating auditors’ fear of losing clients. The results showed that the low number of clients, the selection of auditors by the management, and multiplicity of small audit firms are the main causes of increased auditors’ fear of losing clients. On the other hand, merging small audit firms and forming large audit firms, creating an independent audit committee in the firm, and restricting the creation of new audit firms are the most important ways of reducing fear of losing clients.