For accounting firms, for example, half or more of whose revenue may be provided by a single client, truthful negative revelations are often acts of corporate suicide. … Even when CPAs are too scrupulous to accept bribes to cook the books or look the other way, their firms may be unable to afford to lose valuable clients by pursuing full candor (Seidler, Andrews, and Epstein 1977).

XREF: Connects to broader patterns of conflicts of interest in gatekeeping professions — analogous to auditors, rating agencies, and even publishers beholden to advertisers.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 119