Abstract:Senior executives′ personal characteristics and corporate internal governance environment are crucial to corporate external audit.Based on the upper echelons theory this paper selects Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2019 as the research objects to empirically investigate the relationship between the overseas background of senior executives and audit expenses and the role of internal control quality in the relationship between the two.It is found that the overseas background of senior executives is significantly positively correlated with audit expenses.After adding the variable of internal control quality it is further found that the quality of internal control can effectively mitigate the positive impact of the overseas background of senior executives on audit expenses.It is hoped that the research conclusion can provide some reference for optimizing the corporate internal governance structure and selecting senior managers.