The Role of the Accountant: Including Sustainability to their consultancy services

Focus on sustainability is present and increasing worldwide. The more focused companies and people are to act sustainable and fulfil the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) that are relevant for the environment they are in, the more focus it brings to transparency on the topic. For transparency the need for sustainability reporting arises. The Nordic Accountant Federation has published the first report out of three in 2021, and the goal is to develop Nordic standards for sustainability reporting for small and medium sized enterprises (NSRS). The NSRS report concludes that the accountant will play a major part in the consulting on sustainability reporting for their clients. The NSRS report is the background for this thesis, in addition to an extensive literature search about the accountant’s role in sustainability consulting. We performed a survey amongst accountant firms in Kristiansand to investigate the current landscape on sustainability reporting and the knowledge on NSRS and SDG. Telephone interviews were performed amongst 57 accountant firms in Kristiansand during March 2022. The majority of the accountants in Kristiansand do not consult on sustainability reporting for their clients, and the majority have knowledge of the SDG but not NSRS. The result of this survey is that the accountant’s attitude towards sustainability and the assumption of the stakeholder’s expectation are factors that influence the accountant to consult on sustainability reporting. Most of the accountant firms that do consult clients on sustainability also consult on sustainability reporting for their clients. Age of firm and gender distribution of the firms did not have any effect on consulting the clients on sustainability, but there er is a tendency that the larger firms consult more on sustainability than smaller accountant firms. The NSRS report concludes that the accountant is a natural partner for their clients on sustainability reporting, but the majority is not prepared for the role. For the accountants in Kristiansand, we come to the same conclusion