New technologies are freeing accountants up from much of the drudge work that once characterized the profession, while at the same time offering powerful analytical tools that can help accountants provide more “value-added,” proactive and strategic services to their organizations and their clients. Greg LaFollette, strategic advisor at CPA.com, discusses the opportunities.

If you believe some pundits, technology represents a threat to accountants and auditors. Machines, the thinking goes, will be able to do sophisticated compliance work and the kind of in-depth analysis that only humans can offer now. We see it differently, though: technology is going to change the role of the accountant, not replace it.

"The most obvious application for blockchain and accountants is in the audit, since it provides verification of transactions"

Everyone knows the pace of technological change today is unprecedented, with deep implications for the way we work. But we see opportunity in this transformation, and are pushing to redefine and expand the accountant's traditional role as a trusted business advisor. Automation and innovation are powerful tools in that effort and, if used correctly, will increase the strategic value of the accountant.

Think back to the early days of cloud adoption. One of the biggest trends for CPA firms over the past decade has been the rise of virtual CFO/controllership services, in which practitioners harness technology to offer outsourced finance and accounting services, bill management, human capital oversight, and the like. This category – known in the accounting profession as client accounting services – was a low-margin service mostly seen as a client retention tool before the cloud. But the ability to analyze real-time data, present it in easily-grasped dashboards, and collaborate more closely with clients to shape business decision-making has revolutionized this service line. It's now grown to roughly 10 percent of the average firm's revenue, and it's typically the fastest-growing piece, according to research by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and CPA.com.

Tax and audit practices still anchor offerings for CPA firms, but these areas are undergoing some of the same transformations due to technology innovation as client accounting services. We expect artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain to have a major impact on how these services are delivered in the next few years.

Blockchain – a distributed, secure database that creates an immutable chain of transactions – may be the most interesting case. Gartner predicts the business value added from this emerging technology will exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030, from a negligible base today. Public blockchains – best known as the systems that support bitcoin and crypto-currencies – are probably less relevant to applications in a corporate setting than private blockchains, which are more scalable, have faster transaction speeds and are limited to only authorized users.

The most obvious application for blockchain and accountants is in the audit, since it provides verification of transactions. Unlike some of the hyperbole associated with blockchain and auditing, accountants will still need to provide assurance in several areas, such as configuration of these systems, management estimates of financial statements, etc.

How blockchain's uses will unfold precisely is still unclear, although there is considerable experimentation going on with the Big Four and other top accounting firms. That's one reason the AICPA and CPA.com have joined forces with the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, an association devoted to education and advocacy surrounding blockchain for financial market professionals, to define the impact of the technology on accounting. It's imperative that CPAs and management accountants educate themselves about blockchain and its potential applications, since it's such a fast-moving area.

Now more than ever, accounting and finance staffs must develop complementary skills to ensure they are providing quality service to employers and clients. The skill set for transactional or compliance services is not the same as for advisory services, which we see as a critical future skill for accountants. Finally, we see the future for accountants who leverage technology and advance their skills as one full of opportunity and increasing value for their clients.

It’s a relationship that has been needful, fruitful and even distrustful at times, but accounting firms and the vendors that serve them are an essential component to moving business in general forward.

For all of these reasons and more, the AICPA and their marketing arm CPA.com have been assembling top executives to their New York offices in an annual, UN-style meeting known as the Executive Roundtable. Through this moot, the present and future of the profession and those that serve it are discussed in detail. So what came of this year?

Representing approximately 40 companies targeting the attentions of the accounting community, executives were questioned about their own challenges with the profession, their own competition and where they may be headed. Overwhelmingly, thoughts turned from what was once a heated debate about cloud to one of blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, they realize the profession as a whole continues to struggle with cloud not so much as a "why" question but "what makes the most sense" and “am I moving fast enough?” Vendors clearly feel the pain of their accountant customers and recommenders but in the same right also need to keep pace with what their competitors are doing and what business trends demand (and will).

The overall tone of the meeting was summed up by AICPA CEO Barry Melancon, when he said, “What we are trying to set a tone for globally is this notion that our profession is incredibly valuable and in order to be successful we have to be a profession that is in a constant state of transition.” To that, he added, "It is even more frightening to accept that we are on a job that will never be done.”

The point being, both vendors and accountants are trying to keep up with a future that is already happening. And from an accountant perspective (yes, there were several present at the Roundtable) they are looking for, what I deemed to be partners, no pitches from the vendor community.

So yes, AI and blockchain are technological advances that are happening now to vendors and accountants alike. Where it will take both remains to be seen, just like cloud from 10 years ago. Another consensus, on this point, was that these advances will happen much faster than cloud did in terms of their impact on product and profession.

In the end, with all of this “change” happening and not about to slow down, what are the majority of firms (who, by the way are solo owned or have fewer than 12 employees) to do? Again, it seemed to be up to the vendors to step up and act more like partners to firms to help manage this change. As Jeff Brown, a partner at Top 100 firm Moss Adams so eloquently put it during a large-firm, Q&A session, “If I was a smaller firm, I'm worried I don't have the resources to serve my clients and figure out what to do with AI” and the next wave of technological change.”

To this point, CPA.com VP for Strategic Alliances & Business Development Michael Cerami said, “The training that needs to happen to become a better advisor goes well beyond technology.”

This is true. Somehow firms have to be motivated to change, or at least deal with it, and without proper training on new systems and the ability to manage change outside of just learning tech, stagnation and possibly irrelevance will happen.

So, we go forward from this meeting with the question: Will we see more of a partnership between the vendor and accounting community around these specific issues?

As much as it will change the profession, the new technology offers tremendous opportunities for accountants. Ron Quaranta of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and Erik Asgeirsson of CPA.com discuss why it’s exciting, not terrifying.

At first glance, the threats seem clear: One type of software will learn how to perform all manner of business functions, particularly in finance and accounting, while another will continuously validate any set of data or information.

Between them, artificial intelligence and blockchain seem poised to disrupt — or even destroy — many of the core businesses of the accounting profession, automating or rendering irrelevant important traditional services like the audit. But while there can be little doubt that they will eliminate the need for human beings to perform many of the individual functions traditionally associated with accountants, both in public practice and in industry, they will certainly not eliminate the profession’s overall role, or its importance.

In fact, both AI and blockchain have the potential to help accountants actually boost their revenue, their relevance and their value — provided they’re willing to develop the necessary skills, and change their mindsets.

Understanding why each of these two emerging technologies is less of a threat and more of an opportunity than they might seem requires a separate, deeper dive into each, as they’re going to have different impacts on the profession, over different time horizons.

Artificial intelligence

It’s only partially accurate to describe AI as an emerging technology; it has already emerged in some forms and some applications. It’s at the core of IBM’s Watson, for instance, which Big Four firm KPMG is applying to its professional services offerings, with a focus on auditing. H&R Block is adding Watson’s artificial intelligence to its tax prep process, while the Maryland Association of CPAs is working with IBM to train accountants in technology skills like AI and cognitive computing.

All this begs the question: What, exactly, is AI? Pop culture gives us HAL from “2001” as one example, Skynet from the “Terminator” movies as another, and Scarlett Johansson’s disembodied voice in “Her” as another, friendlier one, but those are fictional characters, not models for AI. “A computer that thinks like a human being” comes close to the overall goal of the field, but that’s an idea that’s both nebulous and fairly far off (to say nothing of not necessarily worth pursuing, given the quality of most human thinking).

A more useful definition, and certainly one more in keeping with the current state of the field, is that AI is software that can draw conclusions from large quantities of data, and adjust its activities based on those conclusions — that can, in effect, learn. Leon Katsnelson, director and chief technology officer for strategic partnerships for data science at IBM, cites the example of an elevator company having AI go through reams of data from all of the sensors on its individual cars, identifying from that data the characteristics of an elevator car that is about to have problems. The AI can then keep an eye on all the company’s elevators going forward, and dispatch maintenance crews as soon as they exhibit any of the pre-problem characteristics.

Essentially, AI is about software that can learn and adapt, which is why one subset of it is called machine learning. “Machine learning is like a rocket engine and data is the rocket fuel,” Katsnelson explained. “In traditional programming, we’re teaching the machine how we do the job — we’re telling it, ‘Repeat what I do.’ AI is about teaching the machine to learn how we learn — to learn from data.”

That means that it can learn without human input, and that it can act without human direction. It can also analyze far, far greater amounts of data than a human being ever could — and make useful decisions and recommendations based on that data. Given all that, it’s not hard to see why it’s considered the next big thing. IBM, Google and the government of China have all made significant investments in it, according to Katsnelson, who also quoted a famous tweet from Wired founder Kevin Kelly: “The business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI.”

Some of those startups will no doubt be in the accounting space, attempting to realize the potential in software that knows the entire Tax Code by heart and can see trends across literally millions of tax returns, or that can learn how to characterize and treat new financial transactions based on how millions of similar transactions have been characterized and treated before.

“What can AI do?” Katsnelson asked. “Just about anything. Where can you apply it? Just about anywhere.”

“Most people think audit is the first field in accounting that will benefit from AI,” he continued. “It allows auditors to dig deeper into the data by processing much larger volumes of data. Machines are much better than auditors at processing huge amounts of data.” AI can also process, analyze and incorporate all sorts of structured and unstructured data and information that auditors can’t — and it will be able to consider all the available data, without the need for sampling. “With AI and machines, you won’t need to sample — the machine can check all the transactions, which human auditors couldn’t,” Katsnelson explained. “That’s where the power of the machine is.”

Nonetheless, Katsnelson still sees a critical role for accountants. “I don’t believe for a second that the auditors will be replaced by machines — the human touch, and human thinking, are critical,” he said. “Human judgment is still paramount.” To operate at its best, though, that judgment will need to be paired with data science skills, and accountants will want to make sure that they’re ready and able to leverage the opportunities that artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning offer.

Erik Asgeirsson, the president and CEO of CPA.com, the technology subsidiary of the American Institute of CPAs, is bullish on the implications of artificial intelligence for those who are ready to leverage it. “Auditors are going to become better with AI. They’re going to provide more value,” he said. “The firms that are leveraging technologies like AI are going to win in the end.”

Blockchain

The idea of machines that think goes back at least a century, so it’s no surprise that AI is fairly well advanced. Blockchain, on the other hand, is still in its relative infancy, with few applications. It’s not likely to have more than a theoretical impact on the profession for at least a year or two, but its eventual impact will be significant, which is why Ron Quaranta, the chairman of the nonprofit industry group the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, says it’s important to make 2018 “the year of education” about the young technology.

That can start with a clear definition of what blockchain is: a technology that creates a database that’s distributed across the Internet but can only be accessed by users with heavily encrypted, highly secure keys. Those users can post individual transactions, or “blocks,” to the database, and when those transactions are accepted, they become part of the “chain” — and are both completely unchangeable, and irrevocably associated with their creator. A later block in the chain may record a change to the status of the assets or the information in the original block, but that original block remains permanently in the chain.

Before exploring what the means for information — essentially, that the structure in which the information is kept automatically audits and validates the information — it’s worth defining what blockchain is not:

It is not bitcoin. Though it is often associated with the famous crypto-asset, blockchain is an entirely separate technology, with applications that go far beyond alternative digital currencies.

It is not a single database. There are already multiple blockchains, and if it lives up to its promise as a self-validating, self-auditing form of database, there will be many, many, many more in the future. There will be public blockchains (for real estate records, for instance, or the provenance of different types of collectibles), but the vast majority are expected to be private, maintained by individuals or companies for their own purposes. Your bank account might be a blockchain, and you might have an individual blockchain for your interactions with the IRS; a company might keep its books in one blockchain, interact with suppliers through another, and manage its sales tax obligations in another (and that one might be accessible to various levels of state or local tax authorities).

Once you have a clearer picture of what blockchain is, multiple implications for the accounting profession begin to present themselves — and it’s only fair to note that many of the first ones are negative.

For instance, by creating pools of instantly verifiable data, it can transform assurance functions. “We may not need audits if we can access automatically validated information,” explained Jon Baron, the managing director of the professional segment for Thomson Reuters’ Tax & Accounting business. “The Big Four firms are hiring fewer accounting grads — we won’t need these armies of auditors.”

There may be fewer auditors, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer audits.

“Blockchain does not mean that the audit will go away,” said CPA.com’s Asgeirsson. “There are going to be huge opportunities in private blockchains for audits. There are going to be assurance needs. Over the next couple of years, you’re going to see some really interesting assurance opportunities arising around blockchain.”

It will be a different kind of audit — the auditors won’t be sampling and waiting by fax machines; instead, they’ll be checking on the security of keys, and pursuing fraud much more aggressively, since they’ll be able to review every single transaction (with a little help from artificial intelligence) — but it will still be an audit, and as the number of individual blockchains climbs, the number of potential audits will, too, creating a large pool of work for future-enabled firms.

Some of this opportunity is already rising from an unexpected source: “The creators of crypto-assets actually want regulators and auditors to show up,” said Asgeirsson: They want trusted CPAs and accountants to put their seal of approval on their innovations, confirming their value for the public.

“The auditing role is not going to go away, and in the near future, it’s going to be more important than ever to help demonstrate the value in these areas,” said Quaranta.

Blockchain’s impact won’t be limited to changing the audit, though. “Internal procedures will become streamlined as blockchain-enabled ‘smart contracts’ execute automatically,” explained Greg LaFollette, a strategic advisor at CPA.com. “Both internal and external processes will be impacted as transpositions, coding errors and misclassifications fade into distant memories.”

And over the long term, he predicts both ubiquity and enormous value for the profession: “By 2027 the ‘trust protocol’ (enabled by blockchain) will be an integral part of everyday life. It will be as deeply ingrained in our personal and business lives as the Internet is today. CPAs in public practice will see huge time savings as the necessity of testing, authentication, verification and substantiation procedures are virtually eliminated. That time will allow the profession to center more on becoming the ‘trusted advisor’ that our clients want and need.” 

Don't panic!

By this point, it should be clear that both AI and blockchain could radically change what the accounting profession does and how it does it, but if past technological innovations are any guide, they’re more likely to shift jobs than to eliminate them.

“Even when machines do take over an activity, that doesn’t mean that jobs don’t remain in those areas. In fact, sometimes they grow,” Baron said. “And new methods of doing traditional accounting work can bring us explosive growth.”

To participate in that growth, however, accountants will need to readjust their skill sets somewhat, and be open to new ideas, approaches and methods. Among other things, they’ll want to work on their data science skills, Katsnelson suggested.

LaFollette had some simple, valuable advice for those who want to prepare for the advent of AI and blockchain: “Read. Avoid getting caught up in minutia — remember to focus on the tool, rather than the code that powers the tool. Most of us do not understand the computer code that makes spreadsheets work — nor should we. However, we do understand how to use the tool!”

He also warned against diving in without adequate preparation. “Shy away from the ‘bright, shiny object’ syndrome. Don’t chase after every new product or service that claims to be ‘blockchain’ or ‘artificial intelligence,’” he said. “Work carefully with your culture leaders and influencers to make sure your staff are fully informed that the firm is aware, studying and planning. And encourage each and every staff member to do the same.”

For now, education may be the profession’s first order of business, if a recent Accounting Today poll is any guide. When asked how well they understand blockchain, 16 percent of the responding CPAs and accountants claimed that they were experts or knew as much as they needed to, 34 percent acknowledged that they had more to learn — and 50 percent answered, “What’s blockchain?”