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SUMMARY: This study investigates whether auditor quality and audit committee expertise are associated with improved financial reporting timeliness as measured by the duration of a financial statement restatement's ''dark period.'' The restatement dark period represents the length of time between a company's discovery that it will need to restate financial data and the subsequent disclosure of the restatement's effect on earnings. For a sample of dark restatements disclosed between 2004 and 2009, we find that companies that engage Big 4 auditors have shorter dark periods than companies that do not engage Big 4 auditors. We also find that companies with more financial experts on the audit committee have shorter dark periods, but only when such financial expertise relates specifically to accounting. Finally, companies with audit committee chairs that have accounting financial expertise provide the most timely disclosures, as the dark periods for these firms are reduced by approximately 38 percent. Our results suggest that both auditor and audit committee expertise are associated with the timely disclosure of restatement details.

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We present experimental evidence suggesting that critical audit matter (CAM) disclosures in the auditor's report involving areas of high measurement uncertainty forewarn users of misstatement risk. Specifically, in our first study with MBA students, financial analysts, and attorneys, we find that CAMs (i) lower premisstatement assessments of confidence in the financial statement area disclosed as a CAM, and (ii) lower assessments of auditor responsibility for a subsequently revealed misstatement in a CAM-related area. In our second study with student participants proxying as mock jurors, we find that the responsibility-mitigating effect of CAM disclosure is driven by CAM disclosures involving measurement uncertainty, as opposed to CAM disclosures involving categorical determinations. Combined, our findings help reconcile mixed evidence from prior research, supporting the view that the forewarning effect of CAM disclosures involving measurement uncertainty could mitigate perceived auditor responsibility for CAM-related material misstatements.