U.S. accountants are stuck in a holding pattern on International Financial Reporting Standards, getting a little more familiar with what they are but not willing to invest resources into IFRS readiness without more guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That was the finding of the latest tracking survey by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, which is trying to gauge how U.S. accountants are preparing to eventually work with IFRS. Last conducted in September, the survey shows a leveling off in the number of accountants who say they are familiar with IFRS along with a slight decline in the number of accountants who say they have no clue.

“CPAs are increasing their knowledge of IFRS but they are waiting for a decision from the SEC on whether IFRS will be mandated,” said Paul Parks, senior technical manager at the AICPA. According to the survey, only 13.5 percent of companies are actively preparing to eventually adopt IFRS while 38 percent said they are putting off any further implementation efforts until the SEC takes action.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has promised the European Union and the rest of the world that is committed to getting the United States on board with a single high-quality set of accounting standards. Its latest move toward that goal was to shift attention toward the Financial Accounting Standards Board and encourage it to work expeditiously with the International Accounting Standards Board to bring U.S. and international rules into closer alignment by mid-2011.

The FASB is developing as many as a dozen major accounting pronouncements with that objective in mind. The board recently published a discussion paper looking for input on how to roll out the implementation of so many major accounting pronouncements produced in an unprecedented window of time.

Park said he sees evidence companies are tuned in to the convergence effort with an expectation that it will likely have the greater impact in the short term than a move to adopt IFRS. “All of these things are very tied together right now,” he said. “Ultimately CPAs are going to need a date certain to really make a lot of progress in adopting IFRS.”