Numerous studies have investigated the influence of CFO characteristics on the quality of information disclosure from the perspective of CFO demographic characteristics like gender, age, tenure, education, and title. However, few studies have focused on the influence of CFO professional background characteristics like legal, financial, or audit backgrounds on information disclosure quality. Taking Chinese A-share listed firms in Shenzhen Stock Exchange between 2016 and 2020 as the research samples and building the ordered logistic regression model, this paper empirically examines the influence of CFO professional background characteristics on information disclosure quality from the three aspects of CFO legal, financial, and audit background based on the upper echelon theory. In addition, the role of audit quality is also explored and explored that might have a moderating effect on the relationship between CFO professional background characteristics and information disclosure quality. The empirical results indicate that CFO audit background is conducive to improving information disclosure quality while CFO legal background and financial background negatively affect it. Meanwhile, it is found that the audit quality of Chinese listed firms only moderates the influence of CFO financial and audit background characteristics on information disclosure quality. With the improvement of audit quality, the negative impact of CFO financial background on information disclosure quality will be further curbed, and the positive impact of CFO audit background on information disclosure quality will be further weakened. These findings continue to hold when tested with a battery of robustness checks. Overall, the research results of this paper indicate that CFO professional background characteristics impose an essential impact on the information disclosure quality of Chinese listed firms. Moreover, audit quality moderates the relationship between CFO professional background characteristics and information disclosure quality. These findings will provide evidence for the importance of recognizing CFO professional background characteristics and audit quality in improving the quality of information disclosure.