Demand for robust technology and data skills has only grown since the dawn of generative AI, which is poised to have a large impact on multiple industries. In accounting, finance professionals are faced with parsing a rising amount of data with less and less time and manpower.
Emerging industries and roles featuring shiny new technologies have pulled incoming college students away from the accounting space, leading to an ongoing shortage of talent. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, however, a brighter spotlight could fall on the importance of accounting skills, said Daren Campbell, Ernst & Young Americas tax, technology and transformation leader.
“I think one of the one of the things that is changing is, [it’s] actually making the tax and accounting domain more important, because what the technology is doing is it's creating the need for people to apply more judgment,” Campbell, a 27-year veteran of the Big Four firm, said in an interview.
Learning the language of business
Many companies are eyeing the potential benefits AI could bring to the accounting space as experienced accountants — overburdened and burnt out — depart the profession in higher numbers while a dwindling number of new graduates trickle in to replace them.
Controllers, for example, are leaning on AI to help successfully execute accounts payable and accounts receivable processes as they struggle to keep ahead of “continuous” reporting requirements, CFO Dive previously reported. Accountants have also begun to make greater use of the technology in their day-to-day work, Campbell said.
Accountants are also not immune to the changing of the times, with companies expecting such professionals to display a growing amount of technical literacy, such as being comfortable utilizing everything from third-party tax compliance tools to different ERP systems in order to pull the data needed to correctly do their jobs, Campbell said.
AI could offer the accounting profession a silver lining, however, as technologies are becoming increasingly easier to use the more popular they become, Campbell said — putting more of a premium on core accounting and financial skills and experience, as opposed to technology competencies.
“I think there's an opportunity here to talk with more students about how accounting is the language of business,” he said. “Technology is being used. But again, you don't have to be a programmer to use it.”
Flipping the operating model
It remains early days for the introduction of AI into accounting, with the technology thus far applied as a point solution to solve a particular issue rather than diffused widely throughout a finance professional’s day-to-day, Campbell said.
With AI still in its nascent stage, there’s speculation about how the technology will ultimately affect the profession, including worries that newer entrants — having relied on AI to complete much of their manual, grunt work — won’t be able to learn the foundational skills they need to work effectively in the space.
In Campbell’s view, however, AI is actually “creating an accelerator” here, as learning “comes through more of the analysis and the application of tax and accounting rules and regulations and law to a set of facts,” he said.
“AI is allowing the professionals to spend more time in that analysis, and less time in some of the data preparation and data cleansing,” Campbell said.
This could represent a key shift for the future of the accounting industry — “for AI to really be transformative, I believe that we need to change the operating model,” Campbell said.
Rather than the present-day, where employees are leveraging technology to complete key processes, in the future “the processes are actually going to be executed by the technology, with our people applying the judgment and doing more of the review,” he said.
