Introduction
The goal of auditors is to protect the interests of shareholders against significant distortions and errors in the financial statements, but, the incentives of managers to consider personal interests in the quality of profits, prevent auditors from achieving their objectives. In contrast, by increasing the audit quality, auditors can discover potential profit management by managers and put managers under pressure in the earning management practice [3]. Therefore, audit quality in companies depends on the mental and psychological condition of auditors and can influence the company’s decisions. The effective factors on an auditor’s job are job stress, auditor’s capability, and the auditor’s personality organization. Recent studies on job stress have provided the basis for the development of theories about work behaviors. Theoretically, job stress is a consequence of the perception of an imbalance between stressors and one’s ability to deal with these stressors [4]. 
Due to the phenomenological and psychological nature of stress, this phenomenon in the same conditions and situations may not have the same impact on different people. However, job stress can have many physical and psychological outcomes for individuals. According to Freud, the founder of human personality psychoanalysis has three structures, including Id, ego, and superego. The ego refers to the second personality structure in Freud’s theory being created from each individual’s forces [7]. The functions of the ego include communication with reality, regulation and control of instinctual forces, thematic relations, thought processing, defensive functions, combined functions, and judgment [8].
Personality structures can be considered as one of the influential causes among other effective causes in human behaviors and pathological indices. Kernberg has proposed three levels of personality pathology according to the level of drivers, structures, subject relationships, and development trends [10]. Therefore, in this research, we attempted to answer the following question:
“Are personality organization, job stress, and ego strength effective on the audit quality of companies?”
Methods
In this applied research, field data were used to test research hypotheses. The present research method was descriptive and predicted audit quality based on personality organization, job stress, and ego strength in the independent audit organization and audit companies. The statistical population of this research was all the auditors of the auditing organization with 191 individuals and independent audit companies with 208 companies, which included at least three auditors in 2019, and finally, 815 individuals were studied. First, some samples were selected randomly among the total research population. In other words, a simple random sampling method was used in the present study. To ensure a sufficient sample size, the Cochran sampling formula was used and with a 5% error and 95% confidence interval, the sample size f was calculated to be 261 cases.
For data collection, four questionnaires were used as follows.
Audit Quality Questionnaire (standard): this questionnaire was developed by Knechel et al. [27]. The questionnaire has 16 questions based on a five-point Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, no idea, disagree, and strongly disagree), which is scored from a totally disagree level to a totally agree level (1-5). This questionnaire has four subscales of management and leadership (1-5), professional quality (6-9), goal and mission (10-13), and customer value (14-16).
Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO) (Standard): This questionnaire was developed by Kernberg [28]. It has 37 questions based on a five-point Likert scale (completely correct, correct, somewhat correct, incorrect, and completely incorrect), which is scored from completely incorrect to completely correct. This questionnaire measures three subscales of reality testing (19-37), primitive psychological defenses (1-10), and identity diffusion of personality organization (11-18).
Job Stress Questionnaire (Standard): This questionnaire was developed by the Safety and Health Organization of England. It has 35 questions based on a five-point Likert scale (always, often, sometimes, rarely, and never), which is scored from never to always level (5-1).
Psychosocial Inventory of Ego Strengths  (PIES) (Standard): This questionnaire was presented by Strom et al. [29] and has 64 questions based on a five-point Likert scale (always, often, sometimes, rarely, and never). The scoring is from never to always (5- 1).
Results
According to Table 1, the results regarding the effect of “ego strength, job stress, and personality organization” on “audit quality” were greater than the critical value of 0.05 (t0.95=1.96).


Thus, the significance of the effect of “ego strength, job stress, personality organization” on “audit quality” can be accepted at the level of the first-type error of 0.05. Therefore, it can be said that personality organization, job stress, and ego strength can predict audit quality.
Discussion
As a result, according to the tests, the final model of the research was as follows (Equation 1):
1. Audit quality=-0.408×JobStress+0.209×Ego+0.351×Personality+εit
 In other words, the results showed that the quality of auditors can be predicted according to personality organization, ego strength, and job stress, which can be used for the performance of stock exchange companies and other investment companies. Considering the fact that auditors’ emotional reactions and mental states are very pervasive in the audit environment, their effects on the auditor’s performance in these environments also seem inevitable. The results of studies collected in the present study can be used as new topics in professional associations for training courses. Most accounting companies have come to the conclusion that the mental skills of individuals are the key element of success. Considering the findings of this study, auditing firms can use other studies that have been done and will be done in this area and observe and explore the impact of their auditors’ feelings and mental states on the performance and outcome of the audit task.
Audit professional associations should consider several mechanisms to examine the concepts presented in this study. Exercises and training courses may increase the awareness of auditors and their commitment to such mistakes. Such periods can depict the importance of such an issue to auditors and, consequently, reduce the factors leading to these problems. In addition, informing these associations can be institutionalized in audit programs to encourage auditors who attempt to collect information on a regular basis rather than based on emotions and mental states. Similarly, informing techniques may be useful for auditors in cases regarding legal claims against them.

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
All ethical principles are considered in this article. The participants were informed of the purpose of the research and its implementation stages. They were also assured about the confidentiality of their information and were free to leave the study whenever they wished, and if desired, the research results would be available to them.

Funding
This research did not receive any financial support from the public, private and non-profit organizations.

Authors contributions
All authors equally contributed to preparing this article.

Conflicts of interest
According to the corresponding author statements, this paper has no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements
The Editor in Chief of the Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology and their respected University are appreciated and thanked.


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