Our mission & principles

Our mission

The Center for Financial Reporting and Auditing (CFRA) aims to provide an effective contribution to scientific research and practice-oriented, pragmatic transfer of knowledge on financial reporting and auditing, as well as financial management more generally.  We serve as a platform for evidence-based exchange between science, practice, and politics in light of enhanced regulatory and political scrutiny on national and international levels.

The CFRA designs and engages in activities to strengthen the dialogue between academics and practitioners and to make highly complex business and finance research (our own and others) more accessible to the broader public. Questions of standard setting and regulation in financial reporting, auditing, and the role of various forms of disclosures in capital markets are explored in publications, conferences, seminars, and international networks. CFRA programming is internationally oriented to examine the increasingly global regulation in these areas.

Our core principles

Accounting research that matters

The CFRA uses rigorous methods to address research questions of practical relevance to financial reporting and auditing. It produces new insights and serves as a hub, communicating research insights to practitioners and research interests to academia. Practitioners include corporate decision makers and preparers, auditors, advisors, regulators, and the investment community as well as society-at-large to the extent that it is interested in corporate transparency.

International network and reach

Building on the ESMT approach, the CFRA is a genuinely international activity. The academics involved in CFRA have a strong international network, and the corporate partners of the CFRA are global organizations. This is crucial because financial reporting and auditing has developed from a mostly legalistic affair to a key component of international corporate governance. Its link to corporate communication and business intelligence is evolving, implying that it is a central building block to corporate transparency and sound decision-making. These activities know no national borders.

Cooperative action

Using its national and international ties, the CFRA cooperates with related institutions to reach its objectives. Its members participate in initiatives like the European Accounting Association, the American Accounting Association, Accountancy Europe, the Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, the academic panel of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, and the Ausschuss Unternehmenrechnung of the Verein für Socialpolitik, among many others. We maintain close research links with leading universities around the world. Joining forces with these and other institutions we can significantly contribute to the development of financial reporting and auditing.