Six years ago the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board agreed to work on a joint project to develop an improved, common conceptual framework that would provide more consistent accounting rules. In September, the boards completed just the first phase of their collaborative effort. Slow going, indeed.
As a member of both FASB's Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Committee (FASAC) and IASB's Standards Advisory Committee (now known as the IFRS Standards Advisory Committee) at the time the project was launched, I was ecstatic that the boards acknowledged the need to address the conceptual framework jointly as they ...