Managers can manipulate a company's reported earnings by changing accounting policies or cash flow decisions, known as "earnings management." This can have serious consequences for the company. By analyzing financial notes, researchers found that firms with similar notes to industry peers are less likely to engage in earnings manipulation. Specifically, companies with more similar notes had lower levels of both accrual-based and real earnings management in the following year. This suggests that having clearer and more comparable accounting information can help prevent misleading financial reporting.