AICPA

What’s In, What’s Out for the Digital CPA in 2026

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Cloud Foundations Out, AI-Powered Growth In.

People you know: Some of the CPA Trendlines contributors and collaborators on the agenda at the 2025 Digital CPA conference.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Tax and accounting firms appear poised in 2026 to double down on AI-driven services, accelerate developments in blockchain accounting, add new automations to CAS platforms, pursue transformative audits, and reimagine talent pipelines.

MORE: Tech and Fintech

If this year’s Digital CPA Conference in Washington, D.C., is any indication, then 2026 will be characterized by AI ubiquity, CAS at the core, and strategic boldness.

Comparing the 2024 and 2025 events back-to-back reveals a dramatic evolution in themes, speakers, and firm strategies — effectively a “what’s out vs. what’s in” for the profession.

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Opportunity Awaits Incoming AICPA CEO

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Some CPAs don’t necessarily support the AICPA or believe it supports them.

By Seth Fineberg
At Large

The accounting profession has long been divided about the usefulness and importance of the AICPA. However, with the first regime change in 30 years, incoming AICPA CEO Mark Koziel will take the helm and have an opportunity to embrace change and bridge some gaps.

MORE FINEBERG: Where Intuit Is at with Accountants | History Could Help Accountant-Vendor Relations | Accounting Needs a ‘Rethink’ Not a ‘Rebrand’ | Big Change Comes with Deep Reflection | Three Ways to Raise the Bar for Your Business
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Moreover, it concerns the leadership and direction this industry body can potentially bring. The word “potential” is used because there is potential in this profession, both for the AICPA and accounting in general.

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How the AICPA Betrays the Public and Undermines the Profession

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Decline and fall

Professor William Dennis Huber at Capella University in Minneapolis argues that public accounting today has abdicated its place as a privileged profession by bounding into an ever-growing alphabet soup of designations and specializations far beyond its public mandate – and for work with no connection to its original purpose: the audit. Do CPAs now share a berth in society no better than acupuncturists, dental hygienists and massage therapists? We wonder. – The Editors

By Wm. Dennis Huber, JD, DBA, CPA, CFE
Professor of Accounting, Finance and Business Law

Huber
Huber

The accounting profession in the USA has been embodied in the American Institute of CPAs since 1936. Thus, the history of the rise and subsequent decline and fall of the American accounting profession is as much a function of state and federal laws and regulations as it is a function of the actions of the AICPA.

We can divide the rise, and subsequent decline and fall, of the American accounting profession into six periods. Each period begins with a radical discontinuity with the previous period. Each discontinuity is marked by legislation or legislative-like events at either the state or federal level that impacted not just the way public accounting was practiced, but also the way the profession was organized. READ MORE →