On Tuesday 4 June 2024, 3.00-4.30 pm CET, FAR will organize an in-person Masterclass with Jonas Vandennieuwenhuysen and Kris Hoang on: The auditor selection process: From tender to relationship management

Key takeaways and implications for practice:

• We provide evidence that despite a process that is highly standardized across companies to comply with regulatory requirements, individual decision-makers within each company vary in how they execute the decision-making steps of that process, for example, in their weighting of evaluation criteria.
• We document how clients aim to signal stakeholders that they selected the best auditor.
• Auditors and clients focus on showing and evaluating fit, trust, and commitment to their auditor-client relationship. We document how clients articulate and discern these intangible qualities they seek in their auditor and how auditors compete to win the audit engagement.
• We consider how the formation of the auditor-client relationship at this early stage can shape the audit. For example, trust and commitment between auditors and clients can contribute to more open communications and better coordination during the audit or to auditors anchoring on promises made during their proposals.
• We discuss how the Dutch regulatory setting impacts the Dutch audit market and how clients and auditors handle this. 

Target audience:

• Audit firm partners, senior managers, and audit firm personnel (including business development personnel) who are involved in responding to audit RFPs. 
• Audit committee members of any entity
• Anyone with a particular interest in regulations surrounding the auditor selection process

The Masterclass itself

• First, we will present our main findings to the public and share what we learned from our eight cases studied.
• Then, we aim to engage in discussion with the participants, to what extent their experiences overlap, what they perceive could be implications and antecedents to our findings
• We will include a small breakout-group activity in which participants will reflect on ideas and proposed approaches that emerged in our findings.

Register here