Effects of Collaboration Period of Chief Executive Officer and Internal Audit Director on Financial Reporting Complexity

This study focuses on the influence of the period of collaboration between chief executive officer and internal audit director on financial reporting complexity. For this, the data from 60 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period of 2012 to 2016 was tested, using Robust Least Squares(RLS) method. In order to measure the financial reporting complexity, the number of the board's activity annual report pages have been used as a criterion of complexity (the longer the reports, the more complexity). The findings of this research indicate that longer collaboration between CEO and the director of internal audit increases financial reporting complexity. The reason is that as the collaboration between them becomes longer, the CEO and director of internal audit will conspire to hide poor performance of the management from investors, therefore they release longer reports(the more pages, the more complexity).