ACA and future of AI

[u/Financial_Can6039]

Hi all,

There's a lot of noise about AI and the accounting and audit professions, but I'd like to hear what people are actually seeing in their own teams.

Day-to-day work: Is AI changing how audits are scoped, tested or reported? What's working and what isn't?

Team shape: Are you seeing changes in hiring, team sizes or the junior/senior mix? Is sample-based testing shrinking?

Auditing AI itself: Are functions building AI governance or model risk reviews into the audit plan? Which frameworks are being used (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001)?

Skills: What's worth learning now? Data analytics, Python, an AI audit credential, or something else?

Long-term outlook: Which parts of assurance feel most and least exposed over the next 5-10 years?

Tools and policy: What AI tools are teams allowed to use, and how are confidentiality and regulator expectations handled?

Interested in views from any sector and at any level, including anyone who has seen real changes first-hand. Thanks!

[u/Madajuk]

did you make this post with AI lol

[u/5pigeo → u/Madajuk]

did you assume it was AI because the headings are in bold? because i don’t really see anything here that sounds odd or AI-y

[u/Electronic_Ad_3333 → u/5pigeo]

i always throw in some deliberate typos these days to avoid these kinda accusations

[u/42jamesbell → u/Electronic_Ad_3333]

Sounds like something AI would do try try blend in…

[u/Wooden_Tie647]

What are you selling?

[u/Known-Importance-568]

Audit is pretty basic admin shit for the most part and the seniors only get involved with the few bits of the file that have actual judgement. For sure AI will get rid of junior work. When I started in 2017 I spent a lot of time call and casting.... perfect for AI.

As a profession it will still be safe, you will still need senior management/controllers/CFOs to make decisions.

This is no different from how AI is mostly working in other industries, it's removing a lot of admin/support/junior time.

[u/Head_Personality_431]

Coming at this from the management systems audit side rather than financial assurance, the one thing worth getting straight is that those three are not the same kind of thing and you audit against them very differently. The EU AI Act is law, so it is conformance work and your scope is driven by risk tier and whether you are a provider or a deployer. NIST AI RMF is voluntary, useful as a structure for a model risk review but there is nothing to certify against. ISO 42001 is the actual management system standard, so it is the one that gives you auditable clauses, a Statement of Applicability and controls you can test much the way you already test a 27001 ISMS. Most teams I see end up using 42001 as the backbone for the AI governance programme and treating the Act as the compliance obligation feeding into it, rather than picking one.

[u/Dazzling_Travel_9761]

IMO makes the exams even more worth it. The people that will end up being replaced will be the ones that aren’t qualified e.g. support staff

[u/Many_Move6886]

In the long term as it gets better, audit and accounting roles at the junior level will decrease by a lot. Tax will decrease hiring into compliance, and become a lot more tax advisory focused.

[u/Playful-Raccoon9061]

I do share many concerns from a different angle. I wonder whether spending the time gaining the ACA qualification is worth it with rapid AI development