are we implementing enough technology?
by hitendra patil
client accounting services: the definitive success guide
- artificial intelligence says, “it’s essential to recognize that the talent shortage in the accounting profession is not a new problem. the profession has been facing challenges in attracting and retaining talent for many years, with factors such as increasing workloads, long hours and a lack of work-life balance contributing to the problem. addressing these issues is crucial to ensuring the profession’s continued success.”
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wait. don’t believe ai at face value.
- because ai also says, “an important factor (why ai cannot easily replace accountants) that cannot be overlooked is the significant role that trust plays in the accounting profession.”
wait. don’t trust ai at face value.
how does ai work and learn?
while writing my latest book, “aiccountants – the what, why, and how of artificial intelligence (ai) for accountants,” i have been keenly studying how ai “works” and how ai “learns.”
i learned that ai could have many biases, and one of them is based on the data used to train the ai modules.
ai learns from its environment, and it is clear to me that #1 mentioned above is because that is the most common information you’d find out there, i.e., the talent shortage is because of increasing workloads, long hours and a lack of work-life balance in the accounting profession.
while those are more likely the substantial contributing factors to the talent shortage in the profession, those are certainly not the only ones that shrink the talent pipeline.
what is it, then?
according to a 2013 university of oxford-published frey and osborne research report, “the future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?” there is a 94 percent probability of accountants’ work being susceptible to computerization. ten years later, in 2023, with ai fervor spreading rapidly, what would this probability be now?
ai solutions are becoming viral and hugely popular. one may strongly feel that ai will not leave much (traditional) work for accountants in the future. and that might be the contributing factor when students decide which specialization to elect. who would want to enter a (perceived) “sunset” industry or a profession with a much less future need for human resources?
ai, and technology in general, can cause a considerable perception problem at the crucial moments when students decide not to pursue accounting as a career. but ai is not the cause of talent shortage. in my opinion, the new talent cannot visualize, see and verify the new types of opportunities that the accounting profession can offer them in the long term. don’t trust me? check out the job advertisements in the profession. what do you see? do you see many futuristic job descriptions and responsibilities?
while ai can surely make it sound as if traditional opportunities in accounting are diminishing, are the alternatives easily visible to the new talent?
but didn’t ai itself say it cannot quickly build trust like humans?
accountants are known as the most trusted advisors for many reasons. but does the new talent see those reasons? do they believe they can reach that “advisor” role quickly? even if they do, are they confident they can be that advisor without much experience? how is the profession telling them that the new talent has a fast track to a different type of job responsibility – and that there are a lot of open positions in such roles? when they read that a top firm laid off about 700 employees, mostly in advisory roles, what should they understand from such news? or are they seeing that the talent shortage is in the traditional roles that ai will ultimately replace?
accountants should want to thoroughly understand how ai works and learns (not like programmers do, but how ai is used / can be used in the profession) and then transfer that understanding into academic circles. only then would (someday) students fathom that “trust” is a human domain.
ai is neither the cause nor the remedy.
it is a double whammy! ai can certainly give the impression that it will eat up most of the jobs in the accounting profession – leading to “pulling away” the students toward other occupations. but at the same time, poor visibility of new-age roles in the accounting profession can make students feel that the remaining roles will take years to reach, thereby “pushing the students toward” other professions. the net effect is the widening gap between talent requirements and talent availability. before we forget, if the current talent shortage is because there is not enough implementation of technology to do the jobs that “open positions” reflect, we are doing even more harm to ourselves as a profession.
no other professionals recognize the impact of changing business environments. no other professionals have the resilience that accountants have – in their practices as well as in guiding their clients. when one of the factors affect accounting firms’ business, i.e., technology, it is time to respond to this situation and respond at the core levels.
do you agree?