Gender, ethnicity, and demographic factors influencing promotions to managers for auditors: An empirical analysis

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors associated with promotions to manager of certified public accountants in auditing with special emphasis on ethnicity and gender. A survey was sent to 2,427 Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) in Santa Clara County, California. We conducted a logistic regression using the survey responses and found that CPAs who were managers had more years of experience and exhibited greater job proficiency in terms of discovering material irregularities and financial statement fraud. They also tended to be predominantly male. Conversely, CPAs who have not succeeded to the position of audit manager tended to have lesser years of experience than those who had, and lower frequencies of detecting material irregularities. They also tended to be predominantly female. While gender appeared to be a significant variable that correlated negatively with promotions, there did not appear to be a significant negative correlation with ethnicity. While there appeared to be a weak association between ethnicity and managerial promotions, this association was not statistically significant. Other factors such as level of college education including holding Master's degrees and possession of additional accounting certifications did not appear to influence the likelihood of becoming an audit manager.