Transactions and events must be accounted for and presented
in the financial statements in a manner that is easily understandable by a user
who possesses a reasonable level of knowledge of the business, economic
activities and accounting in general provided that such a user is willing to
study the information with reasonable diligence.
Understandability of the information contained in financial
statements is essential for its relevance to the users. If the accounting
treatments involved and the associated disclosures and presentational aspects
are too complex for a user to understand despite having adequate knowledge of
the entity and accountancy in general, then this would undermine the
reliability of the whole financial statements because users will be forced to
base their economic decisions on undependable information.
Example
One of the main problems with the financial statements of
ENRON was that it contained a very complicated structure of special purpose
entities that were presented in a manner that concealed the financial risk
exposure of the company. The accounting treatments of ENRON were not
comprehensible by the capital market participants who consistently overvalued
its worth until the inevitable collapse of its share price in 2001 upon the news
of its bankruptcy.
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