Public company CFOs generally are supportive of efforts to develop simplified accounting rules for private companies, and some say they would consider adopting some of the simplified rules themselves if they were made available to public companies.

A spring 2014 survey by Grant Thornton shows 62 percent of 240 public company CFOs said they are in favor of the new process within the Financial Accounting Standards Board for exploring and adopting simplifications for private companies through FASB's Private Company Council. So far, the PCC has recommended and FASB has approved updates to accounting standards to provide simplifications for private companies in the areas of goodwill and other intangibles, derivatives and hedging, and consolidation.

Only 12 percent of public company CFOs are opposed to the rule differences for private companies, while 27 percent said they aren't sure. More than half, or 55 percent, said they believe the accounting alternatives should be made available to public companies, and 41 percent said they would adopt the alternative treatment for goodwill and other intangibles if it were an option. For goodwill, FASB's approved simplification allows private companies to simply write down or amortize the value of goodwill carried on the balance sheet over a specified number of years instead of requiring an annual impairment test with possible full remeasurement of assets and liabilities to arrive at a firm value for goodwill.

“The support for the process and the concept was much higher than we expected,” says John Hepp, a partner with Grant Thornton. “Especially when you look at the number of people who are opposed to process, it's very very low, with a fair number who are indifferent or don't know or have an opinion.” It's a statement, he says, that there's some consensus that the reporting needs of public companies are different than they are for private or not-for-profit organizations.

The survey also polled a larger number of private company CFOs, and 80 percent of them favored FASB's movement to simplify rules for private companies while only 4 percent were opposed. Only 36 percent, however, said they believed the simplified rules should be made available to public companies as well; 34 percent said they were opposed and 30 percent said they are unsure, making private company CFOs fairly evenly divided on the issue.

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