Auditor-provided nonpublic signals of misreporting and CFO dismissal
研究发现，外部审计师向董事会传达的审计调整（非公开错报信号）会增加CFO被解雇的可能性，且该效应在调减利润的调整和董事会监督较好的公司中更显著，表明董事会利用非公开信息进行监督。
Abstract Research suggests that board members value financial reporting quality because executive dismissal often follows low reporting quality events. However, inferences about the board’s demand for reporting quality in these studies are confounded by board members’ reputation incentives because the events examined are public (e.g., restatements). We investigate boards’ demand for reporting quality by exploiting a private signal of misreporting: audit adjustments communicated to the Board by the external auditor. We first survey 29 audit committee chairs to understand whether boards use audit adjustments in their oversight of management and then conduct an empirical investigation to answer our research question. We find an increased likelihood of CFO dismissal following audit adjustments. This association is driven by adjustments that reduce income and by firms with better board oversight. These findings suggest that boards proactively use nonpublic signals of reporting quality and incorporate information from auditors into their monitoring function.