An ethical perspective on accounting standard setting: Professional and lay-experts’ contribution to GASB’s Pension Project

This study focuses on the Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s (GASB) Pension Project which, over 2009–2012, deliberated a highly contested issue over the “correct” discount rates to be used in the discounting of pension liabilities on government financial statements. We analyze the arguments used by participants to justify their preference and find that, despite the unprecedented economic consequences associated with changing the status quo discount rate, all groups of participants favor a deontological justification over a consequentialist or “mixed” line of reasoning. We use a mixed methods approach to determine the prevalence of particular argumentative styles, and to further examine the nature of the arguments made. This study increases our understanding of how “lay experts” – that is to say, citizens who have acquired knowledge in a particular technical domain, but who are not credentialized in the field – participate in policy making processes dominated by accredited “professional experts”. We argue that if lay citizens are absent from the debate and if lay-experts, far from playing a mediating role between lay citizens and professional experts, espouse or mimic the latter’s argumentative style, the benefit of widening participation in accounting standard setting processes – other than providing a thin layer of democratic legitimacy to the processes in question – is questionable.