AICPA

Jan Lewis: Workforce Development Is the Next Imperative | Gear Up For Growth

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Training and growth—not just recruitment—will determine the profession’s future.

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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

When Jan Lewis, vice chair of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), says, “The world is a complicated place, and who better than a CPA to help cut through the noise?” she’s not offering a slogan. She’s issuing a call to action.

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In a wide-ranging and refreshingly candid conversation with host Jean Caragher on Gear Up for Growth, Lewis makes the case that this moment—right now—is one of the most consequential and opportunity-rich periods the CPA profession has ever faced.

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Outlook 2026: Agentic AI Reaches the Tipping Point in Tax and Accounting Firms

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AI-powered firms are closing books faster, reallocating staff time to higher-value work, and widening the competitive gap with slower adopters.

By CPA Trendlines Research
Cornerstone Report

As artificial intelligence transitions from a buzzword to a business imperative, CPA firms across the U.S. are quietly beginning to deploy generative AI assistants, machine learning tools, and “agentic” AI platforms to automate audits, prepare taxes, and provide financial insights.

With the astonishing surge in AI adoption, firm leaders say we’ve reached a tipping point where those not investing in AI risk being left behind.

MORE CPA Trendlines Cornerstone Reports

In this Cornerstone Report, accounting firms show how they are leveraging AI to transform their operations, the benefits and challenges they are encountering, and what it all means for the future of the profession, including:

  • Why AI adoption in CPA firms has hit a tipping point
  • How agentic AI is transforming tax, audit, and advisory work
  • The real productivity, ROI, and revenue gains firms are reporting
  • What AI means for staffing, skills, and firm economics
  • The risks, governance challenges, and regulatory implications ahead
  • How firm leaders can deploy AI without falling behind

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Jin Chang: Why Repeat Last Year’s Questions? | The Disruptors

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Jin Chang: SALY isn’t useless—but it shouldn’t be lazy.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Audit has spent decades digitizing the past—paper binders moved to the cloud, workflows wrapped in prettier software, and manual testing dressed up as “innovation.” According to Jin Chang, that’s not transformation. It’s inertia.

Chang knows because he lived it.

Early in his career as an auditor, he found himself doing exactly what generations before him had done: matching evidence to samples, racing against the clock, and wondering why a four-year degree was being spent on work that machines should have mastered long ago.

MORE STREAMING: Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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“Why aren’t computers doing this better and faster?” he remembers thinking.

That question became the seed for Fieldguide—the audit platform Chang says he wished he’d had, powered by AI agents designed to work alongside auditors rather than replace them.

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Gallegos: HR1 Is Signed; the Advisory Clock Is Ticking | Big 4 Transparency

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Break down the new law, the unanswered questions, and why waiting for certainty is a strategic mistake.

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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

What does it take to turn dense tax law into business wins? In this episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Mark Gallegos, tax partner at Porte Brown, to explore how a self-described “tax geek” became an eminence engine by teaching, writing, and speaking across the country while translating the new HR1 legislation into clear moves for clients. 

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Gallegos serves on the AICPA Strategic Tax Reform Advisory Group (“strike force”), where volunteer experts parse bills, surface practitioner pain points, and help shape the letters and asks that go to Treasury, IRS, and Capitol Hill. That inside track, pressure-testing interpretations with national peers, feeds his day job: delivering 50,000-foot explanations that prompt the most valuable question in professional services: “What should we do next?” 

Gallegos and Piscopo dive into HR1’s planning levers. 

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Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | ARC

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A new definition of “professional degree” limits loan access for accounting students and raises fresh alarms about equity, access, and pipeline. 

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

When the U.S. Department of Education released its negotiated language for implementing the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act’s graduate loan reforms, most accountants probably did not expect to see their field at the center of a political storm. 

But in draft rules tied to the law, accounting master’s programs are not classified as “professional degree” programs for purposes of federal student loan caps.  

MORE Accounting ARC: Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting’s Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z – And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough

That classification matters. Under the new structure, beginning in July 2026, graduate students may borrow up to $20,500 per year, with a $100,000 lifetime cap, while “professional students” are allowed up to $50,000 annually and $200,000 total. Medicine and law make the professional list. Accounting does not. Neither do nursing, education, architecture, social work, nor several other fields that traditionally are seen as high-skill professions. 

In this episode of Accounting ARC, co-hosts Liz Mason, CPA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP; and Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, unpack what that reclassification could mean for the accounting pipeline—and for how the profession sees itself. 

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