Researchers have examined the socialization of auditors at various stages of their professional development, but they have done little or no work on the continued effects of this socialization after auditors leave the firms. Put simply, they have not explored the ways that ex-auditors remember their past. Drawing on the literature in social memory studies and on 37 semi-structured interviews with ex-auditors who used to be employed at large Canadian accounting firms, we perform memory work to examine how ex-auditors transform their audit experience into cultural memory. The narratives of past audit experience elicited during the interviews reveal that ex-auditors develop a complex contemporary representation of this experience. When they solicited their communicative (individual) memories, our participants remembered multiple conflicts between their self-identity and the normative work environment during their time at the firms. However, when they reflected on the impact of their audit experience on their new careers, an alternative and much more collective version of this past emerged. Cultural memories with an elitist and class work dynamic that maintained and justified claims of professional and social superiority began to predominate. We argue that communicative and cultural memory are connected because it is communicative memory that allows cultural memory to take on social forms and exercise cultural domination. Our study makes three important contributions. First, it broadens the socio-temporal perspective of auditing research by highlighting the continued effects of the professional identity of auditors after they change careers. Second, it shows that representations of the past provide ex-auditors with a powerful means to promote their professional interests and structure power relationships within organizations. Third, it introduces the use of reflexive memory work as a rigorous methodological approach in accounting and organizational research.

Auditees can play an active role in influencing staff auditors' professional judgment and skepticism. Yet, although it constitutes one of the main threats to auditor independence, very little is known about the means and extent of auditees' power during the audit engagement. To address this knowledge gap, our study focuses on a specific category of auditees, namely, auditees who have worked as auditors in large accounting firms. We interviewed 36 of these auditees and triangulated our findings with 11 interviews conducted with auditors. At the theoretical level, we conceptualize auditees' influence over auditors as intentional and active through the notion of “social power.” Overall, our analysis shows that the efficacy of auditees' power during the engagement materializes through the mobilization of two main power resources developed during their time at the firms: (i) expert knowledge of auditing techniques and (ii) social capital. On the one hand, relying on their cognitive authority, auditees' employ three different power strategies to constrain staff auditors' operational independence: stage‐setting , teaching , and questioning . On the other hand, auditees' social capital can support the use of two additional strategies: attracting and monitoring . Our triangulation analysis confirms our findings and suggests that auditors may be aware of the threats to independence that auditee expertise and social capital pose. By focusing on auditees' agentic capabilities—that is, individuals' capabilities to consciously exert influence over the course of events—we reinterpret the pressures exerted by clients on auditors as the product of strategic actions and discuss substantive consequences for independence risk.