What if the greatest threat to the accounting and financial profession isn’t artificial intelligence, automation, or some technology that hasn’t been invented yet?
What if the greatest threat is our attachment to what worked yesterday and what is working today?
That came through clearly in Rise2040: Shaping the Future of Finance and Accounting, the AICPA and CIMA initiative where I had the opportunity to share my Anticipatory Organization® platform.
Across the global conversations, participants were asked to think seriously about the future of accounting firms and finance organizations. One response surfaced with striking consistency when discussing barriers to relevance:
“Ourselves.”
The report found that institutional rigidity and deeply embedded ways of working may represent a more immediate constraint than technological disruption itself.
In my professional opinion, that should get every accounting and finance leader’s attention immediately.
Which Accounting and Finance Industry Trends Can We Already See Coming?
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is treating the entire future as uncertain.
As the creator of the Hard Trend Methodology for Planning and Innovation, I teach organizations to separate what will happen from what might happen.
Several forces affecting the profession of accounting provide significant certainty, including:
- AI capabilities will continue advancing
- Data volumes will continue expanding
- Computing power will increase
- Demographic shifts will continue
- Technology will become increasingly embedded in business processes
- Innovation and disruption will continue triggering regulatory responses
Those are examples of Hard Trends. They give leaders something extremely valuable: visibility.
A Soft Trend is based on an assumption about the future remains open to influence. Your organization’s rate of AI adoption, ability to attract talent, market position, and willingness to develop new services are examples.
You cannot stop a Hard Trend, but you can change how prepared you are for it.
Why Is Cultural Inertia Such a Serious Risk?
Rise2040 participants repeatedly referenced the familiar acronym “SALY” — same as last year — mindset.
There is a reason familiar practices survive. They often worked very well and, in doing so, created the illusion that disruption and change would never occur.
That’s a problem. When past success makes us believe it is evidence that the same approach will remain successful tomorrow, we stunt our own growth.
Rise2040 found that some organizations are actively challenging legacy models and investing in new capabilities. Others recognize the need to move but remain anchored to familiar patterns. Still others continue relying on past success as a predictor of future relevance.
This is why accounting and finance innovation is not primarily a technology problem but instead a leadership problem.
Buying new technology while preserving every old assumption doesn’t create a future-ready organization.
Are You a Leader, Fast Follower, or at Risk?
Rise2040’s Transformation Distribution Curve presents three broad positions:
- Leaders anticipate, act on Hard Trends, and build the future
- Fast followers adapt and scale models that have already been proven
- At-risk organizations remain slow to change and primarily reactive
We certainly don’t lack access to information or awareness of accounting and finance technology trends. What we lack is the willingness to act.
Everyone can see AI advancing. Everyone can see automation expanding. Everyone can see client expectations shifting.
Knowing about a trend does not create an advantage. Acting on it before everyone else does is the big difference maker.
That is where Anticipatory leadership creates a first-mover advantage.
What Is a Predictable Problem?
I have long taught leaders to identify predictable problems we can see with enough certainty to take action before they become expensive emergencies.
Rise2040 applied this thinking throughout its analysis.
For example, if AI increasingly reduces routine entry-level work, what happens to traditional training pathways?
The report identifies predictable problems such as:
- Loss of experiential learning as traditional entry-level work changes
- Institutional knowledge disappearing as experienced professionals retire
- AI and cyber risks moving faster than governance frameworks
- Revenue pressure as compliance work becomes increasingly commoditized
- Skill gaps between AI-enabled and non-enabled professionals
These are fantastic opportunities to pre-solve tomorrow’s problems today.
Once you can see a problem coming, waiting for it to become urgent is a wrong choice. Take action now to make a real difference in your business.
What Does a Proactive Strategy Look Like in Accounting and Finance?
A proactive strategy begins by changing the questions leadership asks.
Here are some better questions to ask as an accounting and finance professional of today:
- What Hard Trends will affect our organization regardless of what we do?
- What predictable problems will those trends create for our clients, employees, and business model?
- Which problems could we pre-solve before our competitors or clients recognize them as urgent?
- Which Soft Trends are we treating as inevitable when we could actually change them?
Those questions move accounting leadership beyond simply reacting faster and create opportunities to act much earlier.
Acting earlier matters because transformation becomes much harder when an organization waits until outside forces remove its choices.
Because Much of the Future Is Visible, What Are You Waiting For?
The most provocative message from Rise2040 may also be one of the simplest.
The profession’s greatest barrier may be how long accounting and finance organizations wait to respond to what they can already see.
That makes the future of the profession a leadership choice.
You can react after disruption becomes obvious. You can follow organizations that move first. Or you can identify the Hard Trends that will happen, pre-solve the predictable problems, and create opportunities while others are still discussing what might happen.
Read Rise2040 to see the barriers participants identified, the Hard Trends shaping the profession, and the opportunities leaders can act on now.
Then bring this question to your next leadership meeting: If the major forces reshaping your profession are already visible, what are you waiting to act on?
Download the full Rise2040 report to see how more than 6,000 finance and accounting leaders across 25 countries envision the profession’s future.
You can also master the art of identifying Hard and Soft Trends and develop the skills to become an anticipatory advisor through my Anticipatory Organization Transformation Accelerator for Finance and Accounting.
