In this letter, the authors performed a comprehensive study on suppression mechanism of compensation from nitrogen and carbon related complex defects in N-doped ZnO grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The chemical bonding information of donorlike substitutional complex defects, (NN)O and (NC)O, were restrained with low N/O ratio, leading to the conduction type conversion. High epitaxial temperature has more suppressing effect on the formation of desired acceptor NO than that of (NC)O, as evident by the decreasing hole concentration. Upon utilization of such suppression effect, this study provides a promising route to realize p-type ZnO.