I recently had the pleasure of hosting a meaningful discussion with the Northern Virginia chapter of the Virginia Society of CPAs about where accountants are at with AI and ultimately want to be. What stood out most to me was in a meeting of nearly 60 accounting professionals, everyone was in a different place, and that was OK.
At this stage of the game, it is important to recognize where acceptance of AI tools and platforms is. It is, by all counts, very early days, but what encourages me most is seeing the level of acceptance and curiosity with something so new and unknown. Moreover, while it was a limited, regional sampling, the accountants in the room (some of whom were virtual) were all accepting of where everyone was at, even if they had not made any real moves to use any of the technology.
I left, encouraged to see such open, honest discussions in our two hours together. It was on a level I had not seen with cloud or any other technology set entering the accounting space, and I have some thoughts about that too before I share what came out of this particular meeting.
When cloud technology emerged onto the accounting scene some 15-odd years ago, the narratives and spin began in full force. We heard, “If you’re not a cloud-based firm, you will lose business to one,” or worse, you would not survive by choosing to remain in a disconnected, comparatively unsafe world.
The issue there was fearmongering didn’t work, not initially, as there was little trust in cloud, because the message was largely coming from the companies themselves or those who had a vested interest in seeing certain technology companies rise. There also was no imperative for firms to change when, at the time, there were so many firms that were finally comfortable working with desktop software and made significant investments of their own not only in licenses but also in overall IT to support them.
The firm response was, by and large: “Why should I move to something I don’t know and don’t completely understand where data is going when I have all of these software licenses and IT investments AND I know where my data is going?”Right now, it’s all right next to me, or down the hall, or in a co-location I can go to if need be.”
Some companies even spent millions to advocate for cloud adoption, even at the expense of their own desktop products. As we know, eventually it caught on enough to where no one really discusses “cloud” as any kind of trend or strategy.
Now, AI is here, and the discussions, I can tell you firsthand, are quite different. I have found that in most circumstances, when you can get accountants speaking openly among colleagues about the things impacting their business lives, progress usually follows. It is uniquely human, but when there is a shared, connected experience, discussions become more open and comfortable.
Outside of this fact, when comparing the discussions in the early days (and even some years down the road) of cloud versus where we’re at now with AI, I have found there to be more of a collective “leaning in” than cloud ever could muster. There is also little to no judgement — even if firms have not taken any active steps to work in a platform, they are curious and simply want to know what to do first.
Certainly, those that are just beginning their journeys want to know about specific platforms and what they can potentially do, but mostly firms are, by and large, jumping in on their own because of the very nature of what some tools offer. They want to see what CoPilot can do and what they can create in any of the GPTs or Claude, even investing in the Pro editions so they can do more. They are also happy to share their experiences.
At the end of our time together, we focused on what I think the whole profession could be doing right now. That is, simply looking at where they are now, where they want to be over the next year, and what they see getting in the way. From our group, the answers did vary.
When asked where everyone is at now, as expected, it ranged widely from not having done anything at all, yet (this was only a few) being curious and interested in making a move, to having built workflows for things causing the most blockage and even investing in Pro versions of the aforementioned platforms, or seeing what some of the “built-in” AI models can do in products they already have.
For where they want to be, the answers were largely around time savings and efficiency, possibly even staffing-related, where they could solve their own staffing issues through AI or produce reports in less time in order to spend more of their time having meaningful discussions with clients.
Then, there are the blockers. Most firm leaders in the meeting pointed to security concerns as well as finding the time to learn or work on what they needed to. The point of all of this is that there are no wrong answers, especially when it comes to interest and curiosity about change.
When you recognize that you have a vast network, a community at your side that is willing to accept where you are at, you’ll do likewise. That, my friends, is how progress happens. No judging, no fearmongering, no going over anyone’s heads with lofty concepts. In short, where you are at now is OK, you will get where you want to go and hopefully enjoy the journey.