Create new user using an action

I'm trying to create a new drupal user (& add other info to the database) when the state of an application_form content type changes to 'accepted'. My problem is - I don't know how to access the information in the fields of the application_form node, which is needed to create the new user.

The function signature for the action itself would be;

function module_create_user_action(&$object, $context = array()) {

with &$object being a reference to a node object, I've tried $object->content but there's nothing there.

How can I determine what fields a $node object holds? and more importantly how do I extract CCK field information from the $node object?