Developing a client Acceptance Pattern by External Auditor

Independent auditing has an important role to play in enhancing the transparency of the capital market and creating a sense of trust in investors, which will in turn lead to the growth and development of capital markets and ultimately to the economic development of countries. With the increasing number of auditing firms, competition among firms to attract client has intensified. As a result, audit firms should consider more closely the factors affecting the acceptance of the client to reduce their future costs resulting from litigation and increase their future earnings from other professional services. In this study, using the Grounded Theory, the model of client acceptance by External Auditor in Iran is formulated and it is tried to investigate the effective factors at three levels of auditing institute, auditing profession and clients. According to the qualitative research method, requirement data was collected interview. Open coding, selective coding and theoretical coding were done too. The results show that the most important strategies for audit firms are Recognition, Compromise and Customer Interaction, audit fee and expanding communications. Factors that interfere with these strategies include: customer characteristics such as the competence and integrity of managers, financial capability, customer risks and the importance and size of the client, and the characteristics of the audit firm such as its reputation and independence. The implications of this model can also be classified at the audit firm level, audit market, audit profession, capital market, and at the macro level.