Former Auditors Are a Step Ahead As AI-enabled Leaders
Leaders are lucky.
We can take years of experience and critical thinking and leverage AI quickly.
We know how to get the most from others. AI is similar.
We know how to prompt (we just weren’t calling it that?) or delegate.
We know when the work we receive back is incomplete or wrong.
We know that many times the results aren't sufficient because we set poor expectations or didn't communicate clearly or support.
We also know we are guilty of increasing our expectations. Yesterday's impact is table stakes tomorrow. We stretch our cash and resources to get more. We are never content - it’s what makes us grow and successful but it’s also a challenge.
Working well with AI takes all of our leadership skills. If we apply them with the same diligence we would with a team member, we can accomplish pretty amazing outcomes.
Great leaders are taking advantage of this. Sharpening their skills. Getting into the execution. And appreciating the ability to apply their skillsets in new ways.
The other side of this stands out: how do junior employees build these skills in the new world? That's a real discussion for another day.
An HBR article reports: "The traditional divide between strategic thinkers and operational doers is collapsing."
In small and medium business this has always been the reality. It's had significant costs: lack of segregation of duties, overqualified resources doing detailed tactical work, underqualified staff leading strategy and failing to grow. To name a few.
Yet the practical nature of lean teams and the true costs to hire, coordinate and include more bodies made it the obvious answer.
Fractional leadership solved much of the issue. And AI is amplifying.
Do you know what's funny about AI and financial strategy?
Those of us who are traditionally trained CPAs, who did our years in audit, are ready!
Because with AI you can lead and direct. And then you can (and SHOULD) audit the output. Hard.
Professional skepticism. Tracing to source. Sampling and testing. Materiality. - We didn't know it at the time, but audit was training us for this exact moment.
Need proof that the audit matters? Deloitte refunded part of a government fee in 2025 after an AI-assisted report shipped with fabricated citations. KPMG pulled its own AI study in 2026 after 40 of its 45 citations turned out to be fake.
The firms selling AI advice forgot to audit the output. The irony is outstanding?
The critical thinking that has served us our whole career is now on fire in the best of ways.
And that is so much more fun and closer to the heart than plugging in formulas and manually creating spreadsheets.
Here's the uncomfortable part though. Finance ranks low among business functions in AI deployment. And 68% of CFOs admit they've been slow because they don't know where to start.
The profession most trained to verify output is slow to produce it. Don't let the caution that makes you good at your job become the excuse for standing still.
Leaders, what does this mean?
Be grateful you have the skillsets. And keep sharpening them, adapting for a world where AI is a thought partner and an agent.
Do not get complacent or arrogant - CEOs are building AI agent CFOs. They review the financials with them and challenge them with a clear understanding of how to communicate. They focus on what matters, to the individual and CEO seat - forward looking and growth oriented. You have real competition. And the Finance Leaders who put their nose up or disregard this will be the first to fall behind.
Experts are notoriously poor at articulating tacit knowledge in the abstract, because they know far more than they can say when asked directly to document it.
A more effective method: Don't ask them to document their judgment. Create conditions where it surfaces naturally.
This is how the HBR article frames where to start. Codifying judgment and creating teams where AI and humans work and think together is the next step for winning organizations. And for impactful modern leaders.
Increase your expectations of where AI can help. It isn't just recurring tasks and emails and writing. And increase the expectations of your leadership and what you can accomplish.
Not sure where your finance leadership fits in all of this? Let's talk. Book a call.
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Sources
- Stave, Kurt and Winsor, "Teach Your AI How You Make Decisions," Harvard Business Review, June 25, 2026. https://hbr.org/2026/06/teach-your-ai-how-you-make-decisions
- Deloitte AI report refund: https://neuralwired.com/2026/07/07/deloitte-ai-hallucination-finra-2026/ and https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/deloitte-will-refund-australian-government-for-ai-hallucination-filled-report/
- KPMG withdrawn AI report (Financial Times coverage): https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/12/kpmgs-ai-report-turns-into-a-demo-of-ai-hallucinations/
- State of AI in Finance 2026 (finance ranks last in AI deployment; 68% of CFOs slow to start): https://www.cfoconnect.eu/resources/reports/state-of-ai-in-finance-2026/
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