Engagement and Second Partner Interaction

According to the regulations of the Iranian Certified Public Accountants(IACPA), audit reports are issued with two signatures. According to the mentioned requirements, the review of the second partner is considered as a part of the quality control system in Iran. Until now, the way of interaction and negotiation between the engagement partner and the second partner, who play an essential role in the audit quality, has not been researched in Iran, and the various aspects of this relationship have not been explained. Therefore, in this research, the negotiation model between the auditor and client, which was developed by Gibbons et al (2001) was used. Then, by conducting in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 24 partners of Iranian Audit Firms who work as the engagement or second audit partner and the published interview of 7 experienced Certified Public Accountants (CPA) in professional publications, research data was collected. after analyzing data, a conceptual model of interaction between the engagement or second audit partner was created. findings show a comprehensive picture of this interactive process, which includes: Discussions take place around complex issues (accounting, auditing, laws and regulations), the negotiation is mostly face-to-face, it’s normal in auditing, negotiation is dependent on its context, the process of negotiation is cooperative and non-adversarial, past cooperation experiences are effective on current negotiations, and also the way of interaction and current negotiation can influence future interactions. Other findings show that quality control reviewer does not really exist in Iranian audit firms, the process of interaction between partners .