Exploring the accounting community perspective on the “Consultation Paper on Sustainability Reporting

The IFRS Foundation published a paper, for public consultation until December 31, 2020, called the “Consultation Paper on Sustainability Reporting” (CPSR), aimed at assessing the demand for sustainability reporting standards. The IFRS Foundation aims at defining to what extent the consultation could contribute to the development of such standards. The debate on standards for sustainability disclosure and reporting is discussed at academic and practitioner levels. This paper focuses on the accounting community’s comment letters sent for the above-cited consultation paper. The aim of this work is to understand the accounting community members’ positions on various issues concerning the CPSR, from the academics’ and practi tioners’ perspectives (audit firms, accountancy bodies, consultants/accounting firms). A total of 91 comment letters have been analyzed in this paper. Both quali tative (manual content analysis) and quantitative methods were used and a statistical analysis was performed to validate the data. The findings reveal a positive and prag matic approach by the accounting and the audit firms, as well as by the accountancy bodies, towards a global common set of standards for the sustainability disclosure led by the IFRS Foundation. In contrast, the position of the academics seems more critical, in particular as concerns their disagreement on the scope of the climate related financial disclosure and risks.