Abstract We survey public company executives and directors to understand what audit clients want from their auditor in today’s regulated environment. Our results provide at least three important takeaways. First, executives and directors view elements of auditors’ service quality (e.g., timeliness of communications) as at least as important as auditors’ technical competence. Second, we find no evidence that stakeholders’ preferences for service quality replaces their expectation for technical competence. Third, we find that 57% of executives and 67% of directors feel they can very accurately assess audit quality after an audit’s completion, but we are unable to identify clear determinants of participants’ self-reported ability to assess quality. Our results highlight the challenges facing auditors as they attempt to please clients, protect shareholders, and comply with regulations, all while offering a product whose quality is inherently challenging for others to assess. Our findings motivate future research and inform regulatory efforts.

ABSTRACT We investigate ethnic minority and nonminority sell‐side analysts’ participation in public earnings conference calls. We find that minority analysts are underrepresented in conference call Q&A sessions, and minority analysts who do participate on the calls experience lower levels of prioritization than do nonminority analysts. Minority analysts’ lower participation rates are partially but not fully mediated by characteristics such as experience, work environment, and stock rating favorability. Additionally, firm and conference call fixed effects mediate approximately half the magnitude of lower minority participation rates. Extroverted minority analysts participate at higher rates, but the negative association between minority status and conference call participation is exacerbated when calls are more time constrained, when executive teams are less diverse, and when analysts are from less prestigious brokerage houses. Overall, we document the underrepresentation of minority analysts on earnings conference calls and provide evidence suggesting both analysts’ and managers’ choices influence minority analysts’ participation rates.