This study takes the full launch of the natural resources accountability audits of leading officials in 2018 as the quasi natural experimental event, and takes the resource-based and heavily-polluted enterprises in non-pilot cities in the early stage as the research object to explore the change of enterprise earnings management under the accountability audit. It is found that resource-based and heavily-polluted enterprises mainly use accrual-based earnings management and sales manipulation to inflate profits to deal with the risks brought by the accountability audit, while the expense manipulation decreases due to the increase of enterprise environmental protection investment and the cost manipulation does not change significantly because it will significantly increase the environmental protection pressure in the short term. Further examination found that resource-based and heavily-polluted enterprises did not reduce their real performance to cope with the accountability audit. In addition, higher financing constraints and fierce industry competition will aggravate the impact of accountability audit on earnings management.