Most conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) in accounting carry an assumption that the firms moving fastest are doing it right and everyone else is falling behind. It can be stress-inducing, for sure. PICPA’s new Insights report, “Start from Trust: Adopting AI and New Technology in Small and Midsize CPA Firms,” takes a different view. Firms can land in the wrong place by rushing just as easily as by stalling.
This Insights report combines a survey of small and midsize firms with a framework for deciding how to engage with AI. Three of the report’s findings are worth bringing to your next partner meeting.
None of those pressures may show up on this year’s income statement, so they become easy to put off. However, each one builds over time. Clients who get faster, more responsive service somewhere else start expecting it everywhere. Firms that invest in technology become more attractive to the staff everyone is competing for. And once routine work is automated, firms will need another way to teach new hires about judgment that previous work routines used to build.
The healthier ground is in the middle, and it is wider than people tend to think. Informed caution means the hard questions are getting asked and addressed. Responsible piloting means the firm is running bounded tests with clear success measures and real human oversight. Neither one requires pretending the risks are not there. If your firm has been holding back, it is worth asking whether that is due to informed caution or a delay from a lack of decisions or conversations being dropped.
Five questions tend to separate a tool that works in a demo from one that works in practice:
Can the tool inherit your firm’s permission structure, so the AI cannot see more than the user can?
Can you tell when the tool is uncertain, and does it send those cases to a person instead of bluffing through a result?
Are there audit trails for AI-generated actions and suggested conclusions?
Can you explain to a client, regulator, or reviewer what the tool did, and where judgment stayed with the practitioner?
When the model changes, can the vendor describe its testing, rollback, and incident response?
Asking these in every vendor conversation protects a firm from two common mistakes. One is dismissing a newer product because it is unfamiliar. The other is accepting weak answers because the interface looks polished.
The report’s all circle back to trust: informed caution keeps trust intact and reckless adoption puts it at risk. That, in the end, is the real stake in these decisions. Clients hire a firm for judgment they can rely on, not for its software. The advice in “Start from Trust: Adopting AI and New Technology in Small and Midsize CPA Firms” is to engage now, while firms still have the ability to do so on their own terms.
The full report explains how to tell where your firm really sits and includes supporting materials such as a vendor evaluation checklist that your team can take into its next meeting.
Lee Rogers is the research and Insights specialist at the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs. He can be reached at lrogers@picpa.org.
This article is provided as a complimentary resource by the PICPA and Lee Rogers. Statements of fact and opinion are the authors’ responsibility alone and do not imply an opinion on the part of CPA Crossings officers or members. The information contained herein does not constitute accounting, legal, or professional advice. For actionable advice, you must engage or consult with a qualified professional.