The paper sheds light on the effect of board characteristics on the quality of financial statements of companies listed on the Vietnamese stock market using data collected from the annual reports, financial statements and management reports of 353 companies from 2014 to 2019. The statistical results showed that the quality of financial statements of the surveyed listed companies in the research period is quite low since many of these companies have earnings management. Additionally, the results also indicated that the larger board size and the more frequently board meetings were held, the better the quality of financial reporting was. The study also documented the evidence on the importance of age diversification in improving the quality of financial reporting of listed firms. From the aforementioned results, managers can improve the quality of financial statements of listed companies by choosing the size of the board of directors to suit the business scale, increasing the frequency of board meetings and diversifying the ages of the board