Especially important will be training the right people to understand tax and information-systems impacts, said Brooks.

Some companies will hire temporary staff during the conversion period, which is what happened in Europe, Ostling noted. Brooks, whose unit's parent company operates a large temporary staffing service, said he expects many companies will move existing staff to the conversion process and use temps to keep the regular work going.

Meanwhile, of course, most CFOs will want a working knowledge of the full spectrum of changes. In fact, if they're just starting to acquire that now, they're late.

For one thing, large-company CFOs already are competing with companies globally that are reporting in IFRS; so a familiarity with those standards enables an informed comparison with other market players. For another, finance chiefs need to keep up with other key influencers. "Sophisticated analysts, lenders, and students who have a world view need to understand IFRS today, even if we don't adopt it for a few years," Professor Sherman said.

Are You My Teacher?
For training purposes, companies that have international operations already reporting in IFRS will be the best positioned. Those that don't will have to rely on the professional services firms or other consultants who are boning up on the topic.

"There are more people out there getting trained up on this than you might think," said Brooks. "There's a phenomenon going on in the United States, with many people who have strong accounting, IT, and functional-systems backgrounds going independent so they don't have to deal with corporate bureaucracies or work for big public accounting firms where there is so much pressure to [generate business] and sell your work."

The auditing firms for several years now have had to issue audit opinions on subsidiaries of European companies, so they already have a battery of people they define as IFRS experts, Professor Sherman pointed out. "My view is that these people are not experts in the way some of the Europeans who have been immersed in IFRS are," he said. "But [the auditing firms have] had to deal with the issue, and they have very elaborate training programs for all levels of staff."

And what about the traditional square-one trainers, colleges and universities themselves? By the time companies are conducting broad-based IFRS training for their accountants, will they be able to supplement their staffs with new graduates, thoroughly educated in international standards?

Certainly that will be the case, Sherman said, by 2015, the first year when many U.S. companies will be required to file financial reports using IFRS, if not sooner.

As things stand now, some accounting and business programs that are very internationally focused have already incorporated IFRS courses for a few years, as 2005 was the official launch date for European Community countries.

Many other schools are like Northeastern: They have included IFRS instruction as a component of existing courses like "Contemporary Accounting Issues," but have not yet dedicated courses to the topic. That likely will change fairly quickly now that the SEC's roadmap has been published, which should lead to the publication of textbooks, and with the Big Four accounting firms providing course materials to educational institutions.

In fact, mused Reina, before long there "might be an interesting twist where folks coming out of college are better prepared than those who have been in the field."

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