With the towering incidence of accounting scandals in the epoch of free enterprise, the concepts of earnings management and financial distress have fascinated several researchers in the past few years. Both can prove to be detrimental to the different stakeholders of the firm. With the number of accounting scams uprooting, the corporate governance framework also becomes susceptible in the Indian context. Using a comprehensive statistical framework, this study highlights the compound impact of financial distress and earnings management on the financial performance of the firms. This study also investigates whether corporate governance as a moderator can mitigate the occurrence of both phenomena or not. The sample companies for this study are NSE 100 listed firms covering a decade ending in 2022. Appropriate statistical tools are used to evaluate our research objectives with the help of SPSS and STATA software. The outcome of our study is expected to bring some new perspectives for dealing with this state of affairs. Earnings management has no significant influence on the financial performance variables. In the case of financial return variable Tobin’s Q (Q) only, corporate governance mitigated the influence of financial distress on the firm’s financial performance.
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