In this article for the Harvard Business Review, authors H. David Sherman, Dennis Carey and Robert Brust discuss the idea of joining the audit committee for a company. In general, when business leaders are approached about board service, they are willing to join the board of directors but not the audit committee.
As they explain the problem, in part, “But the increasingly negative perception of audit committee work, propagated by front-page dissections of various accounting scandals, has made it difficult for businesses to attract the strongest candidates to serve in this corporate capacity. Research suggests that the percentage of new hires to U.S. corporate boards who are experienced CEOs has dropped from 53% in 2000 to under 20% today.”