What do we already know from research about the impact of a combination of audit and non-audit services (1) within one firm and (2) for one client on audit quality in general and on the specific audit engagement? Additional focal points are knowledge spillovers, audit firm quality culture and multidisciplinary talent pool (e.g., attracting within firm expertise for audit purposes), the trade-off between independence and the auditor’s knowledge base, and different auditee market segments (e.g., public interest entities versus owner-managed-businesses).

Despite that Root Cause Analyses are well established in the broader “quality improvement and learning from errors” literature (e.g., medicine, aviation, safety, etc.) and has great promise for improving audit quality, we observe diverse use of it in (Dutch) auditing practice and minimal use of it in auditing literature. What are the specific characteristics of the auditing industry that would call for an auditing-specific Root Cause Analysis method (as compared to the general RCA methods)?