Abstract
Control systems are an important component of Corporate Governance because their design and effectiveness impact on strategic success and stakeholder care. The results of this empirical research, carried out here for the first time in our country, suggest a relation between Audit Quality (measured by the Deficiencies in the Internal Controls over Financial Reporting) and the quality of Corporate Governance (measured by selected characteristics of the Board of Directors, the Audit Committee and the Internal Audit). The methodology is based on differences tests and a correlation matrix and is applied to a database collected over a sample of listed companies. The results, in line with existing literature, confirm the direct correlation between Corporate Governance quality and Audit Quality. They also confirm an interpretation of the Deficiencies as explicable in terms of their life-cycle, the number of Entity Level Controls, Process Level Controls, Information Technology Controls, and their seriousness as ranked by Control Deficiencies, Significant Deficiencies and Material Weaknesses