Part 1 — AICPA president warns changes to CPA profession are now inevitable
Speaking to accountants at an event in New York City last week, Mark Koziel, president and CEO of the AICPA, warned that the CPA credential is being challenged by federal policy debates, state-level regulatory shifts, evolving corporate hiring practices and changing priorities within accounting firms.
Koziel is right. In Washington, policymakers are reassessing how professional degree programs are defined and funded. As a result, the Department of Education no longer considers accounting a professional degree, prompting concern across the accounting profession about the long-term pipeline of licensed talent. At the state level, society boards and lawmakers in several jurisdictions have explored changes to professional licensing frameworks, raising broader questions about the future role of regulatory oversight in accounting.
At the same time, companies are increasingly redefining what financial expertise looks like, placing greater emphasis on technology, analytics and strategic finance skills alongside traditional accounting credentials. Some firms, meanwhile, have leaned more heavily into advisory identities, subtly reshaping and sometimes eliminating how the CPA designation fits into their brand and talent strategies.
Side by side, these shifts suggest the profession is entering a period of serious transition. Over the next decade, the CPA credential is likely to become more accessible, but less required and less central to how organizations build their accounting teams.
For CFOs, these shifts point to a fragmenting definition of financial expertise that could reshape audit expectations, governance norms and the balance of what makes up a credentialed finance leader. If the CPA credential loses institutional weight, finance leaders may find themselves operating in an environment where standards are less uniform, talent pathways are more varied and the boundaries of the profession are more often contested.
Part 2 — This week
Here’s a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, Jan. 26
- Durable-goods orders, Nov.
Tuesday, Jan. 27
- Consumer confidence, Jan.
Wednesday, Jan. 28
Thursday, Jan. 29
- Initial jobless claims
- U.S. trade deficit, Nov.
- U.S. productivity, revised Q3
- Wholesale inventories, Nov.
- Factory orders, Nov.
Friday, Jan. 30
- PPI, Dec.
- Core PPI, Dec.
- Chicago PMI, Jan.
Part 3 — Weekly listen: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar
On the most recent episode of The OpenAI Podcast, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar described how, unsurprisingly, AI is already changing the mechanics of finance work inside her organization.
Friar said that, as a CFO, she’s seeing AI tools take over “tasks that previously I would have kept having to add more and more people doing fairly mundane things.” Her example was revenue management, a function where finance teams often spend significant time reviewing contracts for non-standard terms that can trigger revenue recognition changes. “That’s the No. 1 thing usually your auditors come in to audit you on,” she said.
In a pre-AI environment, Friar said, the solution was straightforward but inefficient: Hire more people to keep pace with volume. Now, she said, OpenAI’s tools automate the first layer of review, pulling contracts into a database, identifying unusual terms and suggesting the likely revenue recognition treatment. “It shows me exactly what is non-standard and why,” she said. “It suggests what, therefore, the rev-rec is.”
The bigger shift, in Friar’s view, is not automation itself but how it changes the nature of finance work. Instead of spending time on manual review, teams can focus on judgment and business interpretation, whether a contract term reflects a sales concession that should be corrected, or a broader shift in the company’s business model that finance needs to understand and formalize.
“That to me is why it’s not a bubble, because the value is real and tangible,” Friar said, in contrast to a recent comment by OpenAI’s own board chair. She tied the impact directly to outcomes CFOs measure, including the ability to run leaner teams, improve performance and retention and redirect hiring toward growth-oriented roles over process-heavy tasks.
