Moving from U.S. GAAP to International Financial Reporting Standards will largely impact the way accounting is taught - all the way from the university level to continuing education at the corporate level, and is seen as a joint challenge for the constituencies involved. Imagine you've been teaching and studying French for many years. Then, you get the word that before long you'll be dropping French and using Italian. They're both Romance languages, yes - but the idioms and m idiosyncrasies in one are vastly different from the other.

That's analogous to what's happening in the way undergraduate schools prepare upcoming generations of accountants, as well as how companies and firms train their U.S. statement preparers. It appears likely that within the next three to seven years, U.S. issuers will be using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as published by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), in lieu of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).

Currently, about 12,000 companies in about 100 countries use some form of IFRS. The bottom line for students and practitioners is that they will have to develop an understanding of how IFRS reporting affects financial statements.

As FEI President and CEO Michael Cangemi wrote in the March issue of Financial Executive: "This means that all of the GAAP books you own, everything you learned in college and in your entire career will change."

To prepare for this sea change, it is important to address what schools and firms are doing now and what they should be doing to define the knowledge they want their job candidates and practitioners to have.

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