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The CFO’s role in navigating gen AI transformation

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Artificial intelligence, and generative AI in particular, catapulted onto the scene at lightning speed in November 2022. And today, 250 years after the first industrial revolution, experts believe we have entered the next (some say fourth, others fifth) industrial revolution as the latest advancements in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming industries and societies. This current industrial revolution is set to be one where humans and AI-powered technology will work hand in hand. 

In many ways, the effective adoption of AI, specifically gen AI, both in finance and across an entire organization, rests with each company’s chief financial officer. This has placed the CFO into the driver’s seat and at the forefront of company strategy. It is now within the CFO’s power to decide where to allocate resources and how to effectively integrate AI into their company’s daily activities. By striking the right balance between risks and growth opportunities, CFOs can navigate and manage genAI transformation, maximize returns from AI investment, and create value for organizations both large and small. 

The transformation pressure for CFO’s is firmly in place. And navigating and managing this transformation, both digital transformation and AI/GenAI, are the top two trends at the top of minds for CFOs and finance leaders, according to a December 2023 poll of the AICPA-CIMA Future of Finance Leadership Advisory Group. In addition to the focus on digital transformation and AI/gen AI, it is important to focus on the third-noted top issue of ‘Need for upskilling and reskilling.” The need for new skills like storytelling, data analytics, collaboration and strategic thinking are essential to elevate and accelerate finance and accounting teams to keep pace through these transformations.

I recently hosted a gen AI panel at the North America Finance Executives Summit, and along with two members of our AICPA-CIMA Future of Finance Leadership Advisory Group — Rachael Crump, chief accounting officer of Insight Enterprises, and Claire Bramely, CFO of Teradata Corp. — we addressed common misconceptions and barriers about AI, and shared AI implementation guidelines for CFOs and finance leaders to follow to ensure and enhance team efficiency, productivity, and accuracy. 

“While broadly being led by finance, it’s important for gen AI implementation to be a collaborative process. Ideas from [all over the organization] are important and keep the conversation on ways to implement open,” noted Insight’s Crump.

Key guidelines for CFOs to follow when implementing gen AI:

  1. Start small and start now: There’s a strong consensus among finance leaders on the need to initiate gen AI projects on a small scale. This approach allows for manageable experimentation and learning, reducing risk while gaining valuable insights. The repeated advice is to “just start” and “start somewhere,” emphasizing the urgency of engaging with gen AI without being overwhelmed by its scope.
  1. Prioritize data security and intellectual property protection: Security and protection of intellectual property are critical considerations. Ensuring that information is safeguarded while exploring gen AI capabilities is paramount to maintaining trust and compliance.
  1. Learn from others: The importance of learning from the experiences of others before diving in too deeply cannot be overlooked. This can help avoid common pitfalls and leverage best practices for more effective implementation.
  1. Build a roadmap and plan strategically: Developing a clear plan and roadmap for gen AI integration is essential. This includes organizing data, aligning initiatives across the organization, and focusing on areas where gen AI can deliver immediate value.
  1. Evolutionary, not revolutionary: Adopting an evolutionary approach to gen AI is advised. Move forward with incremental changes rather than attempting an overnight transformation. This method supports sustainable progress and allows for adjustments based on lessons learned.
  1. Finance as a key leader in gen AI implementation: The CFO and finance team should play a leading role in the adoption and governance of gen AI, leveraging its unique position to drive process improvements and analytical enhancements.
  1. Addressing skepticism and building support: Winning hearts and minds across the organization is crucial for successful gen AI initiatives. This involves addressing skepticism, demonstrating value, and ensuring there is a common understanding of gen AI’s benefits and objectives.
  1. Navigating through disillusionment: Prepare for questions about managing expectations and navigating through potential disillusionment with gen AI. The key is to maintain open dialogue, adjust strategies as needed, and keep focused on long-term goals.
  1. Emphasizing data quality and trusted AI: The quality of data and the trustworthiness of AI systems are foundational. Emphasizing trusted, safe AI practices and ensuring high-quality data inputs are essential for reliable and effective outcomes.
  1. Experimentation and value focus: Encouraging experimentation and focusing on use cases that offer tangible value are effective and recommended strategies. Starting with pilot projects can help demonstrate gen AI’s potential and build momentum for broader adoption.
  1. Engagement and involvement: There is a call to “get more involved” and to “just try it” that reflects a proactive stance towards gen AI, suggesting that hands-on engagement is key to understanding and leveraging this technology effectively.

When navigating gen AI-driven transformation within your organization, Teradata’s Bramley emphasized that, “It’s important to remember that the role of gen AI is a journey. Be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This start-small, functional focus approach will ensure you gain value from your implementation.”  

The inevitability and transformative potential of generative AI in finance is unquestioned and advocating for a strategic, informed, and cautious approach to its adoption is key to success. For the CFOs driving AI strategy and implementation starting small, focusing on security, planning strategically, and building organizational support are essential steps toward harnessing Gen AI’s capabilities while navigating its challenges and opportunities.

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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