In a recent report, CFO notes that from the point of view of CFOs and other senior finance executives at public companies, the issue of what and how much to reveal in the financial statements has become a game of chicken.

CFO said that regulators, moving toward a wholesale cleanup of the massive factual and analytical disclosures that have accumulated over many years, are encouraging filers to preemptively step forward and make the edits themselves.

The problem, CFO notes, is that lawyers have long been counseling companies to do just the opposite: err on the side of insignificant disclosures and repetitive boilerplate to make sure they don’t break laws or get sued for omitting a detail or two. That tendency has led in large part to what many call a state of “disclosure overload,” CFO said.

To view the full CFO report, click here.