Earnings management, in accounting, is the act of intentionally influencing the process of financial reporting to obtain some private gain.
"[7] A 2020 report indicated that earnings management was the most common type of accounting fraud the SEC has taken action against under its whistleblower program.
[9][10] "Increasingly, I have become concerned that the motivation to meet Wall Street earnings expectations may be overriding common sense business practices.
Accounting decisions can in turn affect earnings because they can influence the timing of transactions and the estimates used in financial reporting.
[15][16] More recent research suggested that linguistics-based methods can detect financial manipulation, for example studies in 2012 found that whether a subsequent irregularity or deceptive restatement occurred is related to the linguistics used by top management in earnings conference calls.