For the last few years, I’ve used this editorial space to spotlight accounting research being performed in Illinois with a simple goal: to help bridge the gap between the academics who study the profession and the certified public accountants (CPAs) who practice in it. So, I was intrigued when a few colleagues recently published a study examining that very gap.
In their paper, “The Academics of Standard Setting: A Field Study of Financial Reporting Standard Setters’ Engagement With Academic Research,” University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers Christie Hayne and Cassie Mongold, along with Shannon Garavaglia of the University of Pittsburgh, go inside one of the core areas of our profession—financial reporting standard setting. The team interviewed 22 staff members from accounting standard-setting bodies to answer a deceptively simple question: When standard setters build the rules we all follow, do they actually use academic research, and if so, how?
The answer should matter to every CPA because standards shape our daily work. If those standards are expected to rest on the best available evidence (and we’d like to believe they do), then academic research should be part of their foundation.
So, what happens when the people writing the standards can’t easily find that research or aren’t aware it exists? As it turns out, the process connecting rigorous research to real-world standards is more informal (and fragile) than most CPAs may realize.
Standard-setting bodies like the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are expected to consider academic research when developing accounting standards, but the study found this happens inconsistently. Standard setters most often reach for research in the early stages of a project. Typically, this is also the only time they look to academic research. In fact, by the time a standard is finalized, relevant research findings may never have entered the conversation.
Part of the problem is timing. Hayne says academic papers can take years to complete and publish, and standard-setting projects run on their own clocks: “Right now, [standard setters] typically look for papers after a project has begun, hoping someone has already studied exactly the question they’re facing. That’s a difficult expectation because academic research operates on much longer timelines.”
Hayne emphasizes that the problem isn’t that standard setters are dismissive of academic research. In fact, most genuinely valued it. The problem is that the process for using the research is often limited: “They saw the research as credible, objective, and potentially very useful. The problem was that their engagement with it was often reactive, unstructured, and largely limited to reading finished papers.”
One solution Hayne suggests is getting standard setters and academics to have more conversations with each other: “Rather than read a published paper, why not reach out to the authors? Discuss emerging issues, provide feedback on questions that matter, and perhaps even shape research questions before projects are underway.”
Academics could also give standard setters a preview of relevant research projects that are still in process or point them toward relevant research outside the field of accounting.
Perhaps the most striking finding from their research is how ordinary the barriers to academic research turned out to be. The staff who build our standards run into the same obstacles CPAs do when trying to track down research: paywalls, clunky databases, and uncertainty about how to search. Many respondents admitted they didn’t feel equipped to find academic papers on their own and had received little to no training to do so.
Instead, many leaned heavily on a single “academic fellow” to locate and vet their research, which typically ended up being a Ph.D. academic serving in a temporary stint inside the organization (a fellowship). That reliance is efficient, but it creates a single point of failure. If the fellow lacks the right expertise, is stretched too thin, or the role sits unfilled, the flow of research into the process can slow to a trickle.
Additionally, like many careers, accounting academics typically operate within a particular specialty. This is true for both the topic they study (e.g., tax, audit, financial reporting, or managerial, to name a few) and the methodology they use (e.g., statistical analyses of financial/archival data, experiments that examine judgment and decision making, or mathematical/econometric modeling of different scenarios). While most academics have at least some familiarities with each of the various topics and methodologies, it would be impossible for a single researcher to be an expert in all of them.
These aren’t just logistical hurdles—they’re structural concerns rooted in misaligned incentives and process gaps. The unsettling implication is that the role academic research plays in a standard-setting project (and, by extension, the quality of the resulting standard) may hinge, in part, on who happened to be sitting in a fellowship seat when the project was active.
Of course, the gap runs both ways. The kinds of evidence standard setters (and practicing CPAs) find most useful, such as descriptive data, cost-benefit analysis, and clearly stated practical implications, are often the least likely to get published in top academic journals, which reward novelty and theoretical contribution. In fact, several respondents admitted that the type of material most useful to their standard-setting work wasn’t exactly the sort of findings that would advance an academic career. As one respondent noted: “Some of the stuff that we find most useful, like descriptive statistics, isn’t the sort of stuff that’s going to lead to publication in high-quality journals.”
There’s also a nuance worth appreciating: When studies conflict, standard setters don’t treat that as disqualifying. They see competing findings as evidence that reasonable people, working with reasonable data, can arrive at different conclusions. For CPAs, that’s a useful reminder that a new standard sometimes reflects an unresolved empirical debate rather than settled science.
The core tension, then, is that the high-stakes, highly visible standard-setting process rests on a surprisingly informal and idiosyncratic approach to engaging with evidence. The good news is that the study points toward fixes (and they don’t require academics to simply crank out more “relevant” papers or standard setters to read more papers).
Hayne’s prescription is a shift in mindset: “If I were advising standard setters, I’d encourage them to think about research less as a product to consume and more as a conversation to participate in.”
In her view, the single most valuable change is more routine, two-way communication between academics and standard setters: “Earlier conversations help researchers understand emerging issues and help standard setters engage with research while it can still inform their thinking, all while preserving academic independence.”
That lesson extends well beyond the standard-setting bodies. “Practitioners shouldn’t see themselves as passive consumers of research,” Hayne notes. “They can help shape future research by sharing emerging issues and practical challenges.”
Whether through conferences, advisory groups, or simple conversations with researchers, CPAs have more power to influence academic research and accounting standards than they might think.
So, the next time a new exposure draft lands on your desk, consider it a work in progress, informed by imperfect evidence, and still open to perspectives of CPAs like you. Submit the comment letter. Answer the researcher’s email. The pipeline connecting research to practice is fragile, but it’s one we can all help build.
