Wall Street Journal, One Cure for Accounting Shenanigans, by Jason Zweig:

Should accountants have term limits? One giant company after another has gone bust without any warning to investors from its independent auditors that it was in danger. Like the credit-rating firms whose triple-A seals of approval often turned out to be signs of impending doom, accounting firms appear to have analyzed many companies not with green eyeshades but through rose-colored glasses.

One possible explanation: Auditors work for the same company for so long that instead of being independent, they end up co-dependent. Since the Securities Act of 1933, public companies have been required to get independent audits each year, assuring investors that a fresh set of eyes has inspected the books. But those eyes aren't always the freshest.

According to Audit Analytics, a research firm in Sutton, Mass., 30% of the 1,000 leading U.S. companies have used the same firm to audit their books for at least a quarter-century. Fully 11% have used the same audit firm continuously for 50 years or more. Eight companies haven't changed auditors in at least a century; the last time any of them hired a new accounting firm, William Howard Taft was in the White House.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates auditing firms, is asking whether long tenure might lead to complacency. Late last year, the board sought opinions on whether it should require listed companies to rotate their accounting firms every few years. The last of those 611 public comments came in to the PCAOB earlier this month.

An overwhelming 94% were opposed to term limits. The common refrain: Rotating audit firms every few years would raise costs, reduce the familiarity of accountants with a company's books and impair the quality of audits. … The problem, says Howard Schilit, an accounting expert at Financial Shenanigans Detection Group in Key Biscayne, Fla., is simple: "When you're an auditor who's trying to protect a long-term relationship, you have to suck up to the client, and the client knows it."…

As the Arab Spring shows, presidents-for-life are finally going out of fashion. For the sake of investors, we should phase out auditors-for-life, too.