IMA President and CEO Jeff Thomson, CMA, CSCA, CAE; Shari Littan, CPA, JD, IMA director of corporate reporting research and thought leadership; and Brad Monterio, IMA Global Board member and executive vice president, member competency and learning, at the Institute of Internal Auditors, are part of an elite team of authors who will assist with a new sustainability study by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO).

Last month, COSO approved a study to develop supplemental guidance and insights to its authoritative 2013 Internal Control ? Integrated Framework (ICIF) in the areas of sustainability and ESG. The goal of the study will be to help all organizations create and ensure effective internal control by applying the ICIF to sustainability reporting for internal decision making and external public reporting (both voluntary and that mandated by regulation).

IMA^? (Institute of Management Accountants) is one of five founding members of COSO, which was formed in 1985 as a voluntary private sector organization dedicated to improving organizational performance and governance through effective internal control, enterprise risk management, and fraud deterrence. Thomson currently serves as IMA?s representative and lead director on the COSO board.

Stated Paul Sobel, COSO chair, ?All organizations managing their sustainability efforts and producing public ESG reports need effective internal control to build trust and confidence in this type of data used by multiple stakeholders. Regardless of the specific ESG framework or standard, the globally accepted COSO ICIF, with its five components and 17 principles, can help these organizations create, develop, enhance, and assess the internal control effectiveness of sustainable business/ESG information, which often tends to be more qualitative, longer-term and judgment-based than financial reporting.??

It should be noted that the ICIF 2013 update to the landmark 1992 ICIF was enhanced by expanding the financial reporting category of objectives to include other forms of reporting, such as ?nonfinancial and internal reporting.??

In addition to Thomson and Monterio, principal authors of the study will be Robert Herz, former FASB chair and founding member of the IASB; and Robert Hirth, senior managing director at Protiviti and COSO chair emeritus. Littan will be a managing technical editor along with Douglas Hileman, consultant and member of the ESG Leadership Knowledge Group.

The study is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2022 and will leverage insights from stakeholder interviews, diverse third-party research and insights, and the September 2017 paper on this subject authored by Herz, Monterio, and Thomson.

For more information on this COSO study, or if members have significant practical research, cases, or stories to share on this topic, please contact Jeff Thomson at jthomson@imanet.org.?