Based on inverse heat conduction theory, a theoretical model using 6-point Crank-Nicolson finite difference scheme was used to calculate the thermal conductivity from temperature distribution, which can be measured experimentally. The method is a direct approach of second-order and the key advantage of the present method is that it is not required a priori knowledge of the functional form of the unknown thermal conductivity in the calculation and the thermal parameters are estimated only according to the known temperature distribution. Two cases were numerically calculated and the influence of experimental deviation on the precision of this method was discussed. The comparison of numerical and analytical results showed good agreement.