Andreas Barckow, the new chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, has a series of challenges to confront as the world is still in the midst of trying to bat away the coronavirus pandemic.
The new chairman has a serious of institutional issues to attend to and he has flagged those in various forums.
One of the most critical is how he looks at the issue of consultation with global constituents during the next five years.
Barckow has told people he wants the IASB to be more agile but what does agility mean in the context of a global standard-setter that is effectively the body to which jurisdictions, including Australia, subcontract their key developments in accounting standards?
One of the initiatives he wants to implement is a process that brings some order to scanning of reporting issues across the globe.
Highlighting substantive issues that are both significant and prevalent would enable the standard setter to reflect on its priorities.
Setting up a matrix of issues in a similar form to which companies should analyse and assess operational risks is a good idea. It would also provide evidence to stakeholders that their concerns were being taken seriously and assigned an appropriate priority.
Standard-setters always face a problem when constituents will believe that their problem is the most significant. Being able to point to a matrix of priorities will provide the IASB with further evidence that issues are considered and given an appropriate level of attention.
Then there is the issue of using resources to deal with issues quickly as they emerge. Some of this was evident in the work done by standard setters-globally on issues related to the coronavirus.
The COVID-19 work done by Australia and the IASB provided a clear indication that standard-setters are prepared to respond to marketplace needs quickly.
Educational materials that set out how principles should be viewed in the COVID era were prepared by both the Australian and international standard setters. Pandemics cause panic for different reasons and making compliance with reporting guidance easier means that there is one less problem to worry about.
There is also the need to move quickly when guidance needs amendment for issues that cannot be simply dealt with by educational materials.
We saw this with additional guidance on accounting for leases where lease agreements were impacted by coronavirus tweaks. Standards needed some fixing to cope and that cannot be done with educational materials alone.
It is clear from global and domestic standard-setters that they are aware that moving quickly on issues should not compromise the fundamentals of a due process and nor should moving quickly catch stakeholders by surprise.
The IASB is dependent on people buying into using its standards, as a body in London has no legal affect unless a jurisdiction says those standards apply to entities operating within its borders.
Keeping the challenges of stakeholders in mind when revising standards to cope with a fast-moving environment will ensure that the IASB carries constituents with it. Grumpy constituents can cause all kinds of political headaches if standard-setters are perceived as moving too damn fast.