Scandals are often the ‘tip of the iceberg’ whereby they represent ‘visible catastrophic failures’. The dismissal of Arthur Andersen as one of Big 5 international accounting firms and the collapsed of Enron Corporation in late 2001 still making a wave in corporate world. Under a cloud of scandal and shame, the respected accounting firm who was an auditor of publicly traded companies and once stood for trust and accountability for 90 years just destroyed in a split second. The spiralled down of the audit firm has witnessed a tiny fraction of its 85,000 employees across the globe in one month. The greedy of Arthur Andersen in promoting a slicker breed which could turn modestly profitable auditing assignments into consulting gold mines has crumbled the reputation of the audit firm. Its felony conviction for involving in accounting fraud of its notorious client, Enron Corporation, cost Arthur Andersen to be questioned for its auditor independence. In Malaysia, the issue of auditor independence is also not immune. For that reason, the focus of this study is to determine the factors compromise auditor independence in Malaysian Publicly Listed Companies. This study has identified four main factors which perceived to affect the auditor independence. They are audit fees, long audit tenure, audit market competition and the provision of Non-Audit Services (NAS). The aims of this study is to investigate the relationship among the four main factors over the auditor independence. A set of questionnaire was developed and distributed among 280 accountants, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Financial Manager in Public Listed Companies. Each respondent is required to assess each item in the questionnaire using a “5 Likert-scale”. The data collected then was tested and analysed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS). The findings of this study revealed that long audit tenure has positively and significantly influence the auditor independence. Meanwhile, the other factors have no significant influence on auditor independence. The findings of the study has contributed to the literature on auditor and provide further evidence that audit tenure can compromise the auditor independence. Thus, the policy maker should ensure that the audit firm appointment should not be too long which can jeopardise the quality of audit report as well as the independence of the auditor.
