Understandability and Transparency of the Financial Statements of ...

QUESTIONS
As interviewees began to share their views it was important that responses were non-
judgmental (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). This was avoided by accepting all interviewees‟
answers and refraining from judging the appropriateness of their responses during the
interview. This was particularly true in this research where some interviewees,
especially in relation to the accounting method used, wanted to know whether their
method were the best ones. In this situation the researcher avoided answering by stating
that the researcher was trying to get an idea of what was happening in the charities
sector, and thus there were no right or wrong answers.
An advantage of the semi-structured interview guide (Appendix Three) was that it
allowed for certain themes to be discussed whilst still being flexible enough to explore
emerging paths during the interview (Bedard & Gendron, 2004). This happened with
the fourth complexity, the expenditure overheads ratio, as interviewees were totally
against this and more concerned that their financial statements did not reflect the
achievement, or otherwise, of their charity‟s mission. These concerns led to the fourth
complexity growing from its original narrow focus on expenditure overheads to the
wider view of performance reporting.
Qualitative researchers begin their studies with only loosely formulated research
questions (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998), as shown in this research by the questions in the
semi-structured interview guide (Appendix Three) being only the initial „what are you
doing‟ questions. Once ascertaining the meaning for the interviewee, questions were
deepened to determine „why‟ they acted as they did, as the key aspect of this research
was probing why interviewees chose particular accounting treatments. Throughout this
research there was a need to clarify and have interviewees elaborate on what they had
said (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). Even at the risk of sounding naïve I continued to probe
for clarification until I was sure exactly what the interviewee meant (Robson, 1993).
This was achieved by rephrasing, asking for examples or seeking clarification
(Marginson, 2004).
Another aspect that needed to be considered in this research was whether participants
were exaggerating or distorting their responses. Taylor and Bogdan (1998) felt that it is
the responsibility of the researcher to impose cross-checks on interviewee‟s responses.
They felt that the best way to do this is to deal with them directly by seeking
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