AI, the accountant’s friend – or why cheats never win!

Back in the days when my beloved Leicester City used to play at their ancestral home, Filbert Street, I would regularly stand on the terrace in the vicinity of an older Scottish gentleman. Every time an opposition player fell to the ground or appealed for a decision, you would hear his broad Glaswegian ‘Burr’ utter the same three words at full volume…

“Cheats never win!!!”

Unfortunately, I’m not sure that the data would back up his claim but I always took it as a longer term view on life…eventually the cheats will get caught out.

It is a phrase that came back into my head, still with that Glaswegian accent, this week when reading an article on the impact of Artificial Intelligence and, in particular, ChatGPT, on the accounting profession.

Since the launch of ChatGPT late last year, there has been an explosion of interest in AI. The subject isn’t new. AI software has been around since the early 1950s and Hollywood has made a fortune from dramatising intelligent robots and cyborgs.

Neither is the impact of technology new to our profession. When I first started in 1981, a three partner firm had over forty team members. That would be unusual today as technology has taken over systems, processes and tasks. Much of the software that firms have embraced in recent years encompasses AI and machine learning. Iris software, for instance, released their first family of AI-based products back in 2018.

What ChatGPT has done is to create a visible presence for AI and dump it firmly in the middle of the board room table. Now we are not just talking about what AI might do in the future but what it is doing for accounting firms right now!

The Armageddon angle, of course, is better for the headline writers. The loss of thousands of jobs, the dumbing down of the profession by allowing anyone to give ‘advice’, an explosion of new competitors: there are significant elements of reality in all of these and they are topics that accounting firms need to be aware of but let’s look at the other side to the growth of AI.

Technology in the accounting profession has always produced the tools to speed up what we do. The pace of change may be much quicker now but the basic premise remains.

Digitalisation makes our processes more efficient, from the mundane such as data collection, repetitive tasks and basic compliance to the more progressive, such as analytics, reporting and research, digital technology helps us to do what we’ve always been able to do in theory but much, much quicker.

Embracing the development of AI will enable us to keep pace with the rapid changes of the world we live in today. On the basis that time is a major limiting factor for most accounting firms, especially now that recruitment is probably a long term issue, being efficient enough to develop and deliver the services and information needed by our clients today and tomorrow is key to our commercial success. Long live AI as our tool for doing this.

However much AI is embraced by competitive or dark sources, the time we save by using it properly in our firms, still keeps us ahead of the game.

For some business owners and taxpayers, AI generated answers and solutions are all that they need, in the same way that free software ticks the boxes for their compliance. These are not the clients most of us seek. How is AI different to ‘the friend down the pub’ or ‘Google says…’ in this respect?

The computer is not always right. Software is not always right. As for the internet….!!

For increasing numbers of accountants, a client not willing to value their expertise is not a client. A client is someone seeking reassurance, guidance, empathy, understanding. A client is someone who wants things done right. A client is someone looking for an accountant who ‘gets’ their world and supports them in a professional manner.

To utilise AI as a tool in your firm makes perfect sense.

To hide behind AI to cover up a lack of expertise, professionalism or care is quite simply to cheat….



And Cheats Never Win!