For all the talk about how emerging technology may fundamentally change finance and accounting, the effects on clients and the general public tend to get overlooked. That’s to say: While finance teams consider ways to adopt more automation, so is everyone else.
Jack Castonguay, associate professor of accounting at Hofstra University, likened the effects of ChatGPT, Gemini and other artificial intelligence tools on finance to the advent of WebMD on the medical profession.
“I think a lot of our clients are going to use AI in the same way that many of us use WebMD before we go to a doctor: We walk in with something that already thinks it knows what’s wrong with us, and then the doctor has to explain why we’re wrong,” Castonguay said on a panel at the CFO Live: The Future of Finance virtual event on Sept. 24.
New artificial intelligence tools, he added, are “going to push a lot of finance teams to do a lot of that: explaining to clients why their outputs aren’t correct, or why it should be different.” That will reinforce the need for both technical knowledge and soft skills, he said.
Castonguay’s comments, delivered on a panel about developing “next-gen” accounting teams, encapsulated the compounding ways that the profession is likely to change in the years ahead. He was joined by fellow panelists UHY-US CFO Laura LaPeer and Yooz CFO John Gronen.
Gronen agreed that soft skills are becoming increasingly useful in the finance world.
“One of those soft skills is the ability to speak to different types of people,” he told virtual attendees. “The way you speak to someone in IT is generally different than the way you would speak to executive management or someone in marketing. … You have to be able to translate complex financial information to very technical people … and to be able to understand what they’re telling you.”
LaPeer, who worked her way up to finance chief after years of doing audits for companies like PwC and others, argued that these days, CPAs need to “show up in a bit of a different way” for clients.
“It’s not just about filling the binder or filling the file and saying, ‘Here’s the support,’” she said. “You really do have to stay current with some of the trends in AI and understand how different clients might be using it in their business so that you can bring that professional skepticism.”
Building bridges with IT
New tech tools are also forcing finance leaders to double down on partnerships with IT teams, speakers on another CFO Live panel said. Chris Ortega, CEO and fractional CFO, Fresh FP&A, said that to break down siloes between finance and IT, the “first thing you need to do is go build that relationship.”
“And build that relationship first on trust,” he added.
How might one build trust? Panelist John Glasgow, CEO and CFO of Campfire, said it’s a matter of developing relationships “beyond just the business contacts.”
That could involve incorporating IT team members in off-site meetings or lunches, Glasgow said.
“When you get into annual planning or sparring over go-live dates for an IT project, you’ve got a personal relationship,” he said. “You can go in from a place of trust.”
Bona Allen, former senior vice president and CFO of Kajima Building & Design Group, added that it’s “critical” to involve all leaders in long-range strategic planning, not just for the next year.
Meanwhile, for rank-and-file employees, the three panelists agreed that it’s important to make a clear, logical case for the incorporation of any new automated technology. Allen said it doesn’t hurt to reinforce to staff that “folks’ employment is secure,” even during new tech rollouts.
For his part, Ortega framed it as moving from “pain to productivity” for employees. That means clearly understanding staffers’ pain points, and then clearly explaining how a new piece of tech might help.
