About 71% are feeling overwhelmed by A.I. (via Brainstorm Group, HB Publishing & Marketing Co.)
How you can cope and thrive
By Randy Crabtree
A new Cal Berkeley study of a 200-employee U.S. technology company found that AI didn’t free up workers’ time as promised. Instead, it expanded what workers felt capable of and willing to take on.
I suspect we’re seeing the same thing in the accounting profession and other areas of professional services.
My firm’s annual CPA Career Satisfaction survey found that accountants overwhelmingly agreed that AI would benefit their firms long-term. However, most also felt AI would contribute to personal stress and burnout in the short run.
Only 1 in 5 firms has an AI strategy, leaving most firms with varying degrees of chaos.
Barely three years since ChatGPT launched, 98% of accountants are using AI regularly. 88% use it in client service.
By CPA Trendlines Research
With artificial intelligence now firmly embedded in the daily life of tax and accounting firms, the profession’s next test is whether practitioners can learn to run AI before AI outruns the practice.
A new crop of research studies and benchmarking surveys suggests firms have yet to fully govern the tools, price the work, train the staff and protect client trust under AI regimes. Reports from the AICPA, Karbon, CPA.com, Blue J, Intuit Firm of the Future, KPMG, Personiv, the ACCA, Rightworks, Business.com and Citrin Cooperman show AI adoption is no longer in doubt. Coping with it is.
Karbon says 98% of accounting professionals use AI, up 15 percentage points from last year, with 55% using it several times a day and 74% using it daily or more often.
Intuit says 88% of accounting professionals used AI for at least one client service in the last 12 months, and 86% used AI for at least one firm operation. Some 46% of firms are investing in AI training, 21% have an AI policy, and 21% have an AI strategy. Intuit says 30% describe AI as embedded by default in daily work, while 54% use it only when it seems useful.
Accountants, one of the most prized varieties of knowledge workers, are in trouble. AI is coming for the jobs. But Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon may have an answer.
Lochhead and Yoon, who style themselves “the Category Pirates,” are suggesting the biggest change in the nature of work in decades.
In the age of AI, Eddie Yoon says, “knowledge is essentially free.” The credentials, specializations, and years of study that went into becoming an accountant are becoming commodities. Yoon describes a pyramid of knowledge work. At the base is “memorize and regurgitate,” where the majority of professionals have thrived. Above that is “synthesize and curate.” And at the rarefied top are the non-obvious connections: the insights that link disparate facts in ways no one else sees. AI, he argues, is already demolishing the lower tiers.
“The relationship gets you in the door, but it doesn’t get you the work,” says Karen Freeman, chief product officer, DCM Insights, and co-author of Activator Advantage: What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently, in this episode of Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines and hosted by Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing. “Once it’s competitive, it’s a lot harder to differentiate based on your past relationship.”
Gear Up for Growth is tailored specifically for public accounting firms with up to 100 team members looking to expand their practices intelligently and efficiently.
Freeman and co-author Matt Dixon, founding partner of DCM Insights, reflect on what they have learned one year after the release of their bestselling book. They discuss how AI, changing buyer behavior and increasing competition are reshaping growth strategies for accounting and advisory firms. Firms that rely on traditional relationship-based growth models risk falling behind.
In a profession often defined by structure, standards, and well-worn career paths, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, opens a different kind of conversation in a recent Accounting ARC episode—one that challenges assumptions about what it means to build a career in accounting.
His guest, Danielle Supkis Cheek, embodies that challenge.
As senior vice president of AI, analytics and assurance at CaseWare, Supkis Cheek operates at the intersection of technology, methodology, and human judgment. But her path there was anything but linear—and that, Shimamoto suggests, is exactly the point.
Supkis Cheek describes her role less as a technologist and more as a translator. “I like to think of myself as someone who translates across domains,” she says, explaining how she helps software companies understand how accountants actually work—and how technology can reshape those workflows.
