<p>With the wave of crises in the early 2000 notably Enron, auditor independence was put in the spotlight which has continually threatened the integrity of the entire auditing profession. Connected to these accounting scandals, it could be realized that most of the auditors involved in the audits of these corporations had long standing relationship with these clients. In other words, the auditors had extended audit tenures. This puts the issue of audit tenure into the open that is as to how long should auditors serve a client?</p><p>The general purpose of this study is to examine whether extended audit tenures can lead to the emergence of threats to auditor independence which may impair the auditor independence. Our study is quantitative, using a self-administered web-survey to collect our data. The study provides results from a cross sectional design to examine the impact of extended audit tenures on auditor independence. This impact is compared across short and extended (long) tenures on the basis of the threats to auditor independence. Using paired samples t-test in SPSS for our sample of authorized or approved Swedish auditors; we find that extended audit tenures impact self-interest, self-review and intimidation threats that affects auditor independence. Our findings did not reveal any relationship between the advocacy and familiarity threats and the impact extended audit tenures have on them, hence we rejected the hypotheses relating to these threats. However, though the relationship was still not strong, the results for self-interest, self-review and intimidation threats proved significant and this prompted us to accept the respective hypotheses. In conclusion, our results show that there is an association of auditor independence to extended audit tenures.</p>

With the wave of crises in the early 2000 notably Enron, auditor independence was put in the spotlight which has continually threatened the integrity of the entire auditing profession. Connected to these accounting scandals, it could be realized that most of the auditors involved in the audits of these corporations had long standing relationship with these clients. In other words, the auditors had extended audit tenures. This puts the issue of audit tenure into the open that is as to how long should auditors serve a client? The general purpose of this study is to examine whether extended audit tenures can lead to the emergence of threats to auditor independence which may impair the auditor independence. Our study is quantitative, using a self-administered web-survey to collect our data. The study provides results from a cross sectional design to examine the impact of extended audit tenures on auditor independence. This impact is compared across short and extended (long) tenures on the basis of the threats to auditor independence. Using paired samples t-test in SPSS for our sample of authorized or approved Swedish auditors; we find that extended audit tenures impact self-interest, self-review and intimidation threats that affects auditor independence. Our findings did not reveal any relationship between the advocacy and familiarity threats and the impact extended audit tenures have on them, hence we rejected the hypotheses relating to these threats. However, though the relationship was still not strong, the results for self-interest, self-review and intimidation threats proved significant and this prompted us to accept the respective hypotheses. In conclusion, our results show that there is an association of auditor independence to extended audit tenures.