Our main findings suggest that, ceteris paribus, the odds of experiencing an Accounting
and Auditing Enforcement Release (AAER), lawsuit, or restatement are 2.32, 1.10, and 0.47 times higher, respectively, for firms with a STRATEGY score at the cutoff for prospectors relative to firms with a STRATEGY score at the cutoff for defenders. In addition, we find that, ceteris paribus, firms at the cutoff for prospectors will pay audit fees approximately 22 percent higher than firms at the cutoff for defenders, suggesting that auditors incorporate a company’s business strategy in their audit plan and that audit effort varies across business strategies. We examine several possible explanations for why prospectors experience a greater likelihood of irregularities despite the apparent increase in auditor effort. Our findings suggest that the higher audit fees (and hence higher audit effort) for prospectors are insufficient to address the riskiness of these clients. Additional sensitivity tests suggest that our strategy measure captures client business risk and that the observed increase in audit effort for prospector firms is incremental to effects related to financial reporting risk or other risk-based measures used in the audit fee literature. Specifically, business strategy is positive and signifi-cant in the audit fee model in the presence of financial reporting risk factors, and it is distinct from measures commonly used to explain the distribution of audit fees. Together, this evidence suggests our measure of business strategy is a separate construct providing incremental information content beyond traditional measures of client size, risk, and complexity