The Australian National University
School of Accounting & Business Information Systems
BUSN7005 Contemporary Issues in Accounting
Essay Assignment
Semester 1, 2015
Marks: 15
Due Time and Date: No later than 23.59 hours on April 27, 2015
NO EXTENSIONS WILL BE GRANTED ON THIS ASSIGNMENT
Submission: via the Turnitin system on Wattle, using a Word document. Do not submit your assignment in
PDF format.

Purpose of assignment
The purpose of this assignment is twofold. First, it is designed to promote your understanding of the following accounting issues: the objective of general purpose financial reporting according to conceptual frameworks; the qualitative characteristics of relevance and faithful representation, which constitute useful information according to conceptual frameworks (CF); and the debate surrounding the use of conservatism.
Second the assignment is designed to promote your writing skills, including the use of the Harvard authordate referencing system, and, at the same time, ensure that you are fully aware of the importance of referencing at university.
Essay Topic
Write an essay of between 1,200 and 1,500 words in which critically evaluate the following claim.
“The practice of conservatism ought to be prohibited as it undermines the regulatory objective of providing users of general purpose reports with useful information.”

Additional requirements
1.

You must use the Harvard author-date referencing system.

2.

You must reference correctly, both in the body of your essay (in-text) and at the end of the essay
(end-text).

3.

Please adhere to the conventions for treating short versus long quotations.

4.

Please use the following format for the essay: 12 font, Times New Roman, double spacing, margins of 2.5 cm. The format will assist the marking of the assignment.

5.

Your essay is to be supported by not less than 8 academic