Eller Accounting Professor Quoted in Recent Agenda Weekly Articles

Preeti Choudhary, professor of accounting and Eller Fellow in the Eller College of Management, was recently quoted in two Agenda Weekly articles. One discussing the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) recent climate disclosure rule, emphasizing the concept of materiality and the other explains that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is making changes to improve how it enforces rules and regulations in accounting but there aren’t enough young people interested in becoming accountants.

The first article highlights the challenge for companies in assessing the materiality of climate risks and suggests a cautious approach of disclosing more rather than less, especially given the evolving nature of climate conditions and regulations."The definition of materiality is not specific to climate change," says Choudhary. "It is a general term that is used basically the same way materiality is used for all other financial disclosures. Companies should use the same thresholds to determine whether a climate risk is material as they use for any other risk." 

In the second article, Choudhary emphasized how stagnant salaries, a lopsided work/life balance and erroneous qualification requirements are among the top reasons why young people are choosing not to study accounting. “Some universities are seeing a 50 percent decline in enrollment in the field,” she says. “And starting salaries have been stagnant since 2008.  No wonder people are not interested.”

Choudhary joined the Eller College as associate professor in 2017. Previously, she was assistant professor at Georgetown University. She earned her PhD in Accounting from Duke University in 2008. Prior to academia, she worked as an internal auditor for The Washington Post and in enterprise risk services with Deloitte. Her research focuses on capital markets financial accounting, financial reporting for taxes, recognition versus disclosure and financial reporting reliability. She is a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Standards and Emerging Issues Advisory Group (PCAOB SEIAG) and the leader of the Emerging Issues subcommittee.