Today, more than ever, transparency is critical to the provision of business information and intelligence. There are five fundamental qualitative characteristics of information transparency:

Materiality: Material items should be capable of identification at a detailed / granular level.

Accuracy and reliability: Such information should be verifiable and neutral (i.e., free from error or bias).

Comprehensiveness: Information should be comprehensive and in a suitable form for aggregation, consolidation and assessment.

Relevance and timeliness
To be useful, information must be relevant to the decision-making needs of users to enable assessment of expected risks and returns. To be relevant, information should be delivered with sufficient frequency and timeliness to give a meaningful picture of the activity in question.

Comparability
Another essential characteristic of transparent information is comparability. It should be  possible to compare information across sectors, geographies, timescales and by relative trends in financial position and performance.