Accountants can buck the tide of increasing automation

Accountants can build the kinds of skills needed to stay relevant in a rapidly automating world that's increasingly taking advantage of technologies such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence to handle routine financial tasks, according to Institute of Management Accountants president and CEO Jeff Thomson. "It is a bit of a race where technology capability is really moving at warp speed, but it's not clear that the profession's ability to upskill and transform itself is moving at warp speed," Thomson told Accounting Today. "Therefore it's a race for relevance, creating the story, and telling the story of our profession because we want to attract technologists into our profession." He believes the accounting profession will need to do a better job of competing for students and finding ways to attract them to the profession, given its reputation for routine work that is increasingly being automated away. "We get to work with the latest technologies, but not if we don't make that part of our profession," said Thomson.