To ask if financial statements should "represent fairly" or be "relevant" gives a political dimension to the trade-off between reliability and relevance, two characteristics of financial reporting that the IASC/IASB Conceptual Framework does not consider to be conflicting. However, depending on the priority we give to these characteristics, the accounting system differs widely. Some concepts from the behavioural sciences help to better understand the underlying implicit and explicit hypotheses of IFRS's Conceptual Framework and to have a more critical perspective. The answer to the question of the choice between "fair representation" and "relevance" cannot be purely technical due to the fact that the information produced shapes the reality as well as describing it. Therefore, the standards setter has a political responsibility.
