Audit committee members' judgement, independence and financial expertise and the factors that affects these characteristics.

The audit committee has a critical role within the framework of corporate accountability since the jurisdiction of the committee is to oversee and monitor the activities of the corporation’s financial reporting system and the internal and external audit processes [Braiotta, 2004]. Many studies have looked into the structure, characteristics and requirements of an effective audit committee as a committee but relatively few studies have dwelled on the individual audit committee members. This study examines audit committee members’ judgment, independence and financial expertise and the factors that affect these characteristics. Our survey results show that individual audit committee members’ perception of organization management’s credibility and objectivity is positively correlated by the amount of time they have been with the particular audit committee and with the total annual allowance received in the capacity of an audit committee member. In addition, we observe that audit committee members’ self assessment of their financial accounting knowledge does not correlate with their actual performance in the knowledge test. Instead, audit committee members’ self assessment is positively correlated with their level of experience in external auditing (public accounting) and negatively correlated with their level of experience in internal auditing