Unlimited Job Opportunities
CPAs and robots: accounting jobs won’t disappear
Should students pursue a career in accounting? Will robots make accounting jobs disappear? The answer to the first question is a huge YES…because career opportunities with an accounting degree are almost unlimited. With regard to robots…NO, absolutely not! Robots, AI, and Blockchain will change accounting work, but jobs will not disappear. Simple and some medium complexity work will go away but will not fill the space where CPAs provide value on a daily basis. Basic financial statements and basic tax returns should become an automated byproduct of compiling business and personal transactions at the source. Such changes, likely occurring in five years or so, will open more doors for CPAs. Our focus will shift from the less valuable “What happened in the past?” to the more valuable “What strategic changes should we make based on what happened?”
Expanding career opportunities
Those comments come from Bill Reeb, past chair of the American Institute of CPAs, Texas State alum, and CEO of the Succession Institute. As a highly respected and globally recognized expert, Reeb knows first-hand from his consulting activities what is happening in the accounting profession. “Accounting firms, of all sizes, are in an on-going process of major reorganization. They are shifting from being CPA firms to becoming Professional Service Firms encompassing much more than the traditional areas of tax and auditing. They now offer advisory, assurance, fraud examination, software implementation, data analytics, proving business insights, cybersecurity, wealth management, and so much more.” Reeb emphasizes there have never been as many opportunities as there are now for accounting graduates.
“Our profession, because of the trust we have earned in the business and advisory world, has continued to grow rapidly and deeper in our traditional services. Even that success does not compare with how fast and wide our firms and professionals have grown horizontally. Name any role in business and CPAs are there, from leadership positions such as CEO, CFO, and others in the C-Suite to Technology, Analytics, and more. Looking ahead, the basic, entry-level work will be automated. But, that’s a great thing. It means you will be doing more of the highest value, most interesting, most impactful work to help people and organizations develop strategies to achieve their goals. ”
Leveraging technology to perform repetitive, labor-intensive procedures is why improvements such as “zero day close” are now a reality. Automation should minimize errors in accounting entries and processes. That makes it essential to become knowledgeable about Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other technologies. ChatGPT has made the headlines recently as a dramatically disruptive technology. This is, in part, because it was brought to market without adequate time to evaluate the ramifications of deploying it. With capabilities to provide untold benefits, ChatGPT (and other Generative AI) can also have disastrous effects such as divulging corporate trade secrets. This was a recent occurrence for a major player in the chip making industry that had allowed employees to use ChatGPT at work. Consider the dramatic need for risk assessment and evaluation throughout the economy due to this singular technological development. Robots will not cause a decline in work for accountants.
As another example, a Big 4 firm said in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal they are recruiting to fill more than 4,000 entry-level associate positions for this year alone. That is the demand in only one firm. In the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for accountants and auditors is projected to increase by 7% in the decade between 2020 and 2030. That should translate into job stability and good salaries for accounting graduates. When you consider how accountants and auditors will be expanding their roles across many more services in the future, that makes the opportunities almost unlimited for anyone who is a CPA.