Most people who work for the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) leave with the same going-away gift: a frame containing all the covers of the standards they helped publish while there.
Jeff Wilks' frame, which sits next to family pictures on a shelf in his Tanner Building office, is one-of-a-kind.
It's empty, except for one blank piece of paper.
Technically, the blank sheet is accurate. The Marriott School accounting professor didn't publish a single paper during his two-year stint at the FASB, the organization that develops U.S. accounting standards. So when Wilks left, his colleagues awarded him the empty frame as a joke.
But this general ledger of Wilks' work doesn't come close to accounting for everything he did as project manager for Revenue Recognition, a joint project between the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
“The Revenue Recognition project was languishing until Jeff took over as project manager; it had been discussed by both boards for several years, but little progress was made,” says Thomas J. Linsmeier, one of five FASB board members. “Under Jeff's leadership, the project moved forward at a fast pace for standard setting.”
Wilks jump-started the project with his bright mind, people skills, and eternal optimism, says Kenneth Bement, a former student of Wilks and current manager of the Revenue Recognition project.
“Since the day he left, we've been working hard to maintain the momentum that he helped build,” Bement says. “Thanks to that momentum, the FASB and the IASB were able to publish a document six months after Jeff left.”
That document, a discussion paper on revenue recognition, was seven years in the making. The project struggled for five years and burned through several project managers before Wilks arrived in 2006. He returned to BYU shortly before the paper hit the press.
How did Wilks accomplish what others didn't? The consensus among his colleagues is that it was his unparalleled passion for financial reporting issues and his world-class understanding of accounting principles.
Wilks' summation goes something like this: He and his team quickly identified points of disagreement among IASB and FASB board members and set aside those sticky issues. Then they guided members through the remaining foundational issues of revenue recognition and discovered there was much more agreement than disagreement. Using this approach, the majority of board members were able to see eye-to-eye on the more polarizing issues.
Of course, that's an oversimplified explanation of an exceptionally complicated task. The truth is, Wilks' team helped break down strong, diverse, and long-held opinions within the five-person FASB board and the fourteen-person IASB board to lay the groundwork for an international standard that will likely be finalized within the next few years.
Wilks' efforts were monumental in the acceleration toward universal adoption of a single set of international accounting standards, says BYU School of Accountancy colleague Earl K. Stice.
“There is no one in the world who understands revenue recognition better than Jeff Wilks,” Stice says. “And he is right here with us. Sometimes we don't realize what we've got.”
Still, all Wilks has to show for his FASB efforts is that blank piece of paper—that and a position as an academic advisor to the IASB, the London-based organization that sets accounting rules for more than 100 countries. Wilks accepted this ad hoc advisory position toward the end of his FASB commitment as a way to stay involved with the Revenue Recognition project until it produces a final standard.
The jump to the IASB was a natural fit for Wilks, who had traveled to the U.K. more than half a dozen times to deliberate issues with IASB board members. Wilks says he feels as much at home with the IASB as he did with the FASB, which works out nicely, since the FASB was home to Wilks for more than two years.
A New Environment
Wilks' FASB stay, which caused him and his wife, Melinda, and their five children to relocate from Utah to Connecticut, lasted from May 2006 to August 2008. Wilks and his family welcomed the change of scenery even if he didn't have any space for his woodworking hobby.
“The closest to woodworking I got was the pinewood derby,” says Wilks, who keeps a full wood shop in his Orem home. “But the transition for my family truly was seamless.”
Following their father's adventurous lead, the Wilks children—Ashlyn, Tate, Dallin, Tanner, and Maleah—jumped right into their new community four minutes from downtown New Canaan and made Connecticut home.
Ashlyn, “the social butterfly,” was soon pirouetting at a well-recommended ballet studio, while the boys were making a splash at the city pool and spending warm New England nights at dad's softball games. Melinda held down the den as a Wolf Scout leader and enjoyed frequent trips to Manhattan with other New Canaan mothers.
Wilks says the Marriott School's strong support of professional leaves made the whole experience easier. From the first day Wilks was hired at BYU in 2000, his accounting department superiors suggested he consider taking time off to engage in the professional sphere.
Since 2000, six full-time accounting faculty members have made good on professional leave opportunities, including Steve Glover at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Greg Burton at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and John Barrick at the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation.
When Wilks' leave came to an end, the FASB offered him a permanent position. Wilks admits it was a real consideration for him and his family, but in the end, the FASB couldn't quite measure up to BYU.
“Jeff was asked to stay at a substantial increase over his BYU salary,” says Kevin D. Stocks, director of the School of Accountancy. “Jeff chose to return because of his love for BYU and his love for the students. We are delighted to have him back.”
Stice adds, “He understands issues very clearly. His opinion is highly valued by the faculty.”
Wilks thinks fondly about his time in Connecticut but couldn't be happier about being back at BYU. Not only is he back with sharp students and “the best group of faculty colleagues anywhere in the country,” but he is also within twenty minutes of Utah skiing.
Back in the Classroom
On 16 February of this year, Wilks took his three oldest kids on one of their regular day trips to Sundance Ski Resort. Somewhere between the thrill of the hill and the thrill of his children's developing skiing and snowboarding skills, Wilks ended up on the wrong side of a nasty tumble that battered his left knee. Specifically, the MRI showed a nondisplaced tibia fracture, a grade 3 MCL tear, and a partial tear of the ACL.
Doctors ordered him to stay off his feet as much as possible. For Wilks' glass-is-half-full personality, that was not an option.
“I'll be more careful going down now,” he smiles.
In addition to noticing his optimism, students and colleagues at the Marriott School laud Wilks' brilliance and love of learning. Both characteristics made it easy for him to retool his approach to teaching in light of his professional leave experience.
Wilks' two-year FASB position made him re-think the way he teaches accounting standards. In previous years, he stuck to the basics of the U.S. accounting system—the U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), which was the previous know-all, end-all for his students.
For the first time last fall, Wilks required students to prepare all case recommendations using both the more rules-based U.S. GAAP standards and the more principles-based International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
But Wilks doesn't double up the homework just to pile it on. He requires it because he knows students will have to master both standards once they join the workforce of the evolving global economy.
“Now it is easier for me to tell students they are going into a field that, within ten years, will require them to work with companies that use IFRS,” he says. “The nice thing is that by teaching both U.S. and international standards, I get to teach the concepts behind the rules and why the standards make sense. It opens your eyes to what it means to be an international professional.”
A Global Perspective
Wilks sees himself as training the next generation of world leaders. World leaders need to have an international perspective—especially in an increasingly global economic climate—so he is giving them a worldwide view on accounting standards.
Fortunately for the students, Wilks' perspective is one of the best.
“Our students are much better prepared than people who come from other places because we've got professors like Jeff Wilks,” Stice says. “There is no one in the world who knows things in this sphere that he doesn't already know.”
Stice, who has an impressive international accounting résumé himself, agrees with Wilks that today's students must master the international standards because they're on their way to being adopted on a universal basis.
That adoption, though, can't happen until the United States and other countries feel confident in the international standards.
According to recent estimates, more than 100 countries have adopted the IFRS. But many of those countries still use their own GAAP standards as the default and apply IFRS only where they can. Cue the influential actions of the IASB and FASB.
It is with these two boards that Wilks has spent the past two-plus years honing revenue recognition concepts. As of now, the IFRS has only two standards on revenue recognition while the United States has more than 100 rules on the issue.
Like the IASB and the FASB, Wilks believes a single set of global accounting standards will be an improvement to users, preparers, auditors, and regulators. But to get high global adoption of a set of international standards like the IFRS, all the pieces need to satisfy the would-be adopters.
And that's where the Revenue Recognition project comes into play. According to Wilks, it is one of the key projects watched by the sec as it considers mandatory adoption of the IFRS. If the revenue recognition standards Wilks and his team developed become a final standard within the next few years, it will be a huge step toward solidifying the high-quality global standards.
“The movement toward IFRS is accelerating throughout the world,” Wilks says. “And the need to learn IFRS is inevitable, regardless of whether the United States mandates adoption.”
One could see it as making a difference in the world one financial standard at a time.
“It all fits so perfectly with our mission at BYU—to reach out and serve globally,” Wilks says. “I try to open up students' minds to the opportunities that exist for them throughout the world. Many of them return from their missions and say, ‘I would love to do something for the people in that country,' and then they get started on their studies, which are so often United States centered, and they lose sight of that desire to serve globally. We are trying to open their eyes again to the whole world around them.”
It makes sense, then, that Wilks has a large map of the world occupying one of his four office walls. On his desk, just below the map, sits a woodcarving of Nephi from his mission in Ecuador. That also seems to fit.
And across the room from the map and the carving, on the third shelf up, next to the pictures of his family, is that empty frame. It doesn't look quite so empty anymore.
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Article written by Todd Hollingshead
Photography by Alisia Packard
About the Author
Todd Hollingshead is a former journalist who works in BYU's University Communications office. He graduated from BYU in 2004 with a degree in communications and worked for two years at the Salt Lake Tribune before switching careers to public relations. He and his wife, Natalie, live in Orem with their two children.
