Since the development of the conceptual framework financial reporting has continued to make significant changes to accounting practice and to allow considerable discretion within accounting treatments. From across your financial reporting studies, give two examples of issues within financial reporting where over time the profession has either made changes to the way in which companies are required to report a type of transaction, or allows companies discretion to choose between different accounting treatments for a transaction. For each example that you choose, your answer must:

outline the change(s) made/area(s) of discretion and the rationale for it

identify the potential significance of the change/area of discretion for the published annual accounts of a large public limited company

critically evaluate how decision-useful the current treatment of each one might be for the two user groups, investors and employees.