This accounting expert is looking beyond financial numbers

Where the industry is headed next.

“Most of my research in the last eight years has gone towards a broadening of accounting beyond just the financial perspective,” says Dr Belinda Williams from the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, an expert in the fast-expanding area of sustainability reporting.

By focusing on the non-financial aspects of her field, such as environmental reporting, social reporting, and diversity reporting, Dr Williams is part of a movement in accounting that is applying financial principles to other areas of society.

“It’s about moving beyond the numbers, but also encapsulating the numbers, and broadening them to provide a wider perspective,” she explains.

Dr Williams’ interest in non-financial accounting arose during her early PhD work in 2009.

“When I started reading the research on it, it was like opening up another world, because I had just been so focused on numbers,” she explains.

“But there was this accounting academic community that was moving away from the financial focus and looking at a broader perspective – that accounting wasn’t just numbers, and it’s not just looking at profitability. It’s looking across every sphere to bring other aspects in.”

Over the course of her PhD, which she completed in 2011, Dr Williams investigated local council sustainability reporting, and measured whether accountants were getting involved in sustainability reporting in this area.

“I asked the question of whether they were getting involved in local council sustainability reporting, and found that at the time, they were not.”

Since then, Dr Williams has been investigating the ways accountants can move beyond looking purely at profit-and-loss statements, and towards sustainability, diversity, and integrated reporting.

“Accountants can bring a great wealth of experience – we know how to report, so I see accountants as a key part of this process, whether it be sustainability reporting, integrated reporting, or social and environmental reporting,” she says.

Collaborating with Associate Professor Sumit Lodhia from the University of South Australia, Dr Williams is now looking at the role accountants can play in integrated reporting, which attempts to consolidate many aspects of a business – financial, sustainability, strategy, and governance – together into one forward-looking report that assesses value creation in the future.

By working with local councils, Dr Williams is able to measure how the involvement of accountants has changed. And what she’s found is encouraging.

“From my PhD studies, I found that accountants weren’t getting involved in these different dimensions of reporting,” she says. “But what we’re finding now is that accountants are more and more involved in this non-financial reporting realm, which is great.”

According to Dr Williams, one of the main reasons local councils haven’t used accountants in their reporting process in the past is because they just haven’t considered using them. She’s hopeful that her research can change this.

“For so long, accountants have been seen as just bean-counters and number-crunchers,” she says. “But this is actually helping local councils see that accountants can bring the perspective of how to report in a way that is factual and consistent.”

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