Standards proving counterproductive
27th September 2006
According to a leading research analyst Bell Potter, reported in The Age, revisions to Accounting Standards have made it more difficult to analyse company performance.
Analyst Peter Quinton said that company results presented under the new accounting standards, the Australian equivalents to International Financial Reporting Standards (AIFRS) - were “nonsensical and misleading”.
“Analysts like me spend an inordinate amount of time reconstructing AIFRS accounts in order to get a true picture. I think any sort of organisation that’s relying on public accounts without reconstruction has got serious problems.”
These same issues apply just as profoundly in triple bottom line reporting, where tick-box compliance with global reporting is misleading, and provides little support for stakeholders’ decision-making.
Business Assurance demands that organisations develop, and share the underlying dynamics of sustainability - the basis of organisations’ materiality decisions - if sustainability data-dumping and greenwashing are to be prevented.