The Financial Accounting Standards Board expects to issue a standard that would provide an option to measure many financial instruments on an instrument by instrument basis at fair value, including available for sale investments, derivatives, equity method investments, firm commitments and an entities own debt.

Respondents who plan to make use of the fair value option said they will use it for financial investments (84 percent), investments accounted for using the equity method (69 percent), firm commitments (58 percent) and their own debt (47 percent).

In addition, the survey asked CFOs if they will adopt the fair value option early -- to do so also requires early adoption of Statement 157, Fair Value Measurement. Six percent said they will adopt Statement 157 early, and 5 percent said they will adopt both early.