Am I resistant to the change aI is bringing?
The mere thought of the days before AI as a finance executive makes me shudder! Neck-deep in Excel spreadsheets, relying on each other to verify transactions, half-awake. Whoof! As a solo firm, some of the things I have been able to achieve in the last couple of years? Well… thank you, AI and efficiency.
Today, with technology, I can do in minutes what used to take hours, sometimes days, and a lot of caffeine.
That said, when it comes to business finance, there are lines I am not willing to cross. A 95% score would earn an A* in many situations. But in finance, 95% accuracy is not enough if we cannot account for the remaining 5%. My professional skepticism is far more interested in what is missing than in what the system got right. So, when I hear that accountants are resistant to the change AI is bringing, I don’t think that is quite fair. What I, personally, am resistant to handing over is that 5%.
ACCA’s 2024 report on AI in finance offers an apt example. At Parkdean Resorts, an AI system reached around 94–95% accuracy in categorizing repairs and maintenance costs after 12 months of monitoring, correcting errors, and refining the system. That is a useful result, but it also shows that getting AI to work well involved human input. And accuracy in one task is not the same as having confidence in an entire set of financial reports. KPMG’s 2026 Global AI in Finance Report similarly highlights the importance of governance, controls, and human oversight.
Now, imagine standing before a board to present a set of accounts that is 95% accurate, and defending it with, “The system is usually right.” I need to know what is wrong with the other 5%. Who is responsible? Have the anomalies been challenged? Has anyone followed the trail and asked whether the numbers, even when they reconcile, tell a story that makes sense?
And this should not be just the finance executive’s concern. As a founder, if your finance solution is heavily dependent on AI, good for you. You are embracing the possibilities. But you should also want a trusted human to take a closer look, to go beyond the surface and challenge what needs challenging.
This goes beyond finance, too. Just last week, I sat across from Zsike Peter, author of Thinkbait, as she discussed human creativity in the age of AI. It was a timely reminder that while technology can do much of the heavy lifting, we should be careful about surrendering our judgement, intuition, and imagination along the way.
So, no, I am not resistant to the change AI is bringing. I have benefited from it in ways that deserve another newsletter of their own. I am, however, resistant to letting go of my professional judgement. Give me the AI. Let it do the heavy lifting. Just don’t ask me to put my name behind numbers that have not been properly verified.
