Randy Johnston: Accounting’s Brave New World of MCPs | The Disruptors

If MCPs are the infrastructure, agentic AI is the workforce.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start">?</span><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start">?</span>True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Randy Johnston has been in accounting technology longer than many of today’s practitioners have been alive. With more than 50 years in the field, and a hand in designing everything from IBM ThinkPads to Excel’s PivotTables, he has seen more technological revolutions than he can easily count. He even wrote AI code in 1975 in Lisp. Through it all, he has remained true to a singular ideal: “My personal mission has always been to help as many people as possible do the things they want to do with technology.”

MORE DISRUPTORS: David Cristello: Growth Breaks Things – and That’s Normal | The Disruptors | Blumer, Vacin: What Only 5% of Firms Get Right | Disruptors | Ira Rosenbloom: PE Forces Firms to Pick a Future | The Disruptors | Doug Slaybaugh: How to Define “Values in Motion” | The Disruptors | Nancy McClelland: Bookkeepers Need a Safe Space to Collaborate | The Disruptors | Chase Damiano: Good Operations Means Defining How the Hand-Offs Happen | The Disruptors | Jeff Seibert: Digits Software Moves Toward Real-Time Accounting | The Disruptors |

MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network

Yet Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises and co-founder of Network Management Group, says the most significant shift is happening right now with Model Context Protocols (MCPs). MCPs are a technical layer that allows multiple systems to be connected and queried through AI. Though he’s spent decades watching technology evolve through mainframes, databases, graphical interfaces, and SaaS, he says MCPs may be the most consequential development he’s seen in years.

Posted on August 17, 2026

Liz Farr

About the Author

Liz Farr, CPA, is a special contributor to CPA Trendlines, bringing an insider's clear-eyed view of the tax and accounting business and a passion for advancing the profession.

She's the host of the hit CPA Trendlines podcast series "The Disruptors," available everywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

As founder and proprietor of Farr Communications, she is the secret weapon that her clients use to get their messages out. She has written blog posts, web content, articles, white papers, case studies and books for accountants and accounting tech companies. Her specialty is ghostwriting for coaches and consultants who want to move accountants into the future. She can bridge the gap between the dream these visionaries have for the future and the mindset and reality that today’s accountants are living in.

Five of her past and current clients have been named to Accounting Today’s annual list of 100 most influential in accounting. She has written under her name for the Journal of Accountancy, Intuit’s Firm of the Future blog and AccountingWEB. She has also appeared in Forbes, CFO.com, and Accounting Today.

Farr has a broad educational background, studying biochemistry at the University of Munster, Germany, and obtained her bachelor's degree as a double major in biochemistry and German at the University of New Mexico. She also studied German, Spanish, computer science and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and continued her studies in linguistics at the University of Washington. She earned her master's degree in accounting in 2004 from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, qualifying as a licensed CPA in 2005.

Professionally, Liz began as a tax preparer at H&R Block before working at several local CPA firms in the Albuquerque, N.M. area. At her last assignment as a tax manager, she helped a team develop streamlined processes for getting tax returns out faster and more accurately.

After spending 15 years working as an accountant in the Albuquerque, N.M., area, she traded in her ten-key for a pen and has been writing full time since 2018.

She can be contacted at Farr Communications.

When she’s not writing or studying the accounting business, she’s hiking or skiing in the mountains of New Mexico.

Click here for more by Liz Farr

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Continue reading your article with a CPA Trendlines Pro membership.