Why firm leaders are excited about AI (and why you should be too)

Someone once said that fear is excitement without the breath. And we’re seeing that firm leaders are both excited, and fearful, about AI in accounting. 

There are two sides to it.

One is, “Great, AI can do my job.” There are lots of tasks that people have to do every day that don’t inspire and spark joy. Suddenly we have a ‘buddy’, a partner, that can help us with them.  

And then there’s the fear of, “Oh my goodness, AI can do my job.” We know that these capabilities are becoming available to our clients too, and we wonder if we’re going to be needed anymore. And that’s the fear.

We know from looking at past digital transformation that in general, yes, AI will take on a lot of the tasks that we’re doing and make them not valued or needed anymore. But it will also open up the ability to do work that is so much more complex and magical. 

This is why firm leaders are excited about AI (and why you should be too).

The opportunity

We’re not passive observers of this AI revolution. We can be active. We can dive in, get on the tools, learn how to drive them, and start using them as superpowers.

With AI, you can move data from one location to another and enter it into 17 different systems. AI helps us automate these tasks, without having all the technical skills that automation once required. That gives us a lot of power.

We don’t know, exactly, what those new superpowers are going to be. But what we do know is that those of us who learn how to drive this technology will be able to pick up those superpowers and use them.

The opportunity, the power, is with us. That’s very exciting.

AI is more than a tool

We are seeing a big shift from ‘doing’ to ‘reviewing’. With AI, every person in your firm has their own AI assistant that can do the work that can then be reviewed.

But AI is also a coach. A mentor. An expert in topics that you want to learn. A tech whiz that can help you modernize. A brainstorming buddy that can talk to you at 11pm on a Saturday.

If you are a person who wants to grow, there is now no limit. That is a great opportunity for accounting firms, and future-forward leaders know that.

What this means for our careers

Two of the big questions I hear are

• “How will young people learn accounting if AI does the job for them?” 

• “How are they going to become skilled?”

But if you look at how high schoolers use AI today, it’s actually the other way around. The ones who really want to learn are using AI to dive even deeper. They’re asking it:

• “I don’t understand XYZ, can you explain it to me?”

• “Ask me multiple choice questions about this.”

• “Teach me how to do XYZ.” 

• “Give me a scenario to apply this to. Did I get it right?” 

Because of this, the learning becomes so much better, and so much more effective. 

Now, young people coming into the workplace don’t have to start their career by learning to be compliant, follow rules, and perform mundane tasks. They have a learning buddy and a mentor from day one, so their ability to grow, be proactive, and do interesting work is also there from day one.

Later in people’s careers, when they’re getting into management for the first time, it can be scary and uncharted. You don’t necessarily learn how to be a manager when you study to be an accountant. But once again, with AI, you’ve now got a buddy that can explain how to navigate this new territory. It can sit in meetings with you, listen to you and coach you, and give you tips on what you did well and what you can do better and chart a path when you are doing things for the first time.

AI is there to elevate every step of our careers. And accounting firms that embrace it will benefit.

AI can help us be more human

We keep hearing about the bad side of AI. But good stuff can happen too, and that’s in our hands. We can use AI to elevate each other. 

Imagine if we put AI in the hands of people who are disadvantaged. Imagine what they could achieve.

We can use AI to help us see the humanity in other people, and understand people who think very differently to us. 

Think about any topic that you have a strong opinion on. And then ask your favourite AI: You are an intelligent, intentional, articulate person who holds views about [your topic] that are opposite mine. Tell me your narrative, and why you believe what you believe.

It may not change your opinion, but it will be much easier for you to see the humanity in the other side. 

AI can help us get closer to each other. It’s not about replacing our humanity. It’s about amplifying it.

Emerging AI use cases

Accountants love the deep research capabilities in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. In fact, according to Karbon’s State of AI in Accounting 2025 report, 39% of accounting professionals are using these tools to support a broad range of research activities. It’s the number one emerging AI use case today.

There is now a whole category of tools emerging that are specifically trained on tax research, and are designed to be more accurate, reasoned, and factual. Right now, they’re still pretty immature, but they are developing fast.

It will be interesting to see whether we will end up using the deep research capabilities in the general purpose AI tools or these emerging specialised tax research tools

What’s coming next: AI that does

Right now, we own our tasks. AI helps, but we review and make all the decisions. 

What we’re starting to see now, not just talk about, is the world of AI agents. This is when we take AI and we give it access to our tools. We give it agency and autonomy to decide how it’s going to achieve a task, and then do it.

And not only that. AI agents can work together, so there is an AI agent manager that receives a task from a human, plans how to approach it and delegates it to other agents who specialize in specific tasks. 

This is what’s coming.

What we’ve experienced so far is AI that talks to us. What’s coming is AI that can actually do tasks autonomously for us. 

Fear is healthy

I want to distill in you a little bit of healthy fear. 

AI often gets things wrong, like a human. We need to remember that. As much as we love and enjoy AI, we can’t trust it. We need to keep reviewing everything AI gives us before we send it to the next step of the process.

The other fear is about our jobs, and our futures. I think we’ve all felt it at one point. 

The only way I know how to deal with fear is first to acknowledge it, and then get up and take action. The action cannot be “I will stop AI being used in the world” that’s not in our control. 

The only action is to get in there and get involved. Learn how to use these tools, learn how to be on top. So whatever AI does to the industry and however it reshapes it, you’ll know that it’s happening, when it’s happening, and you will be ready. 

The only way I know how to not be replaced by AI is to become a driver of AI. And I want all of us to be drivers of AI.