CFO Survey: Traditional Accounting Skills Losing Relevance in Finance

Of all the numbers in a recent CFO survey by cloud accounting provider iplicit, one lands hardest: 14%. That is the share of 250 UK mid-market finance leaders who still consider traditional accounting skills important for the next generation. AI and automation proficiency (41%) and cybersecurity and data governance (39%) have taken their place at the top of the wishlist. The finding does not mean debits and credits no longer matter. It means they are no longer enough.

That distinction is worth dwelling on, because the conversation around AI in finance has a tendency to collapse into binary: either the robots are coming for your job or nothing is really changing. The reality emerging from multiple surveys across geographies and firm sizes is more interesting than either camp allows. The finance profession is not dying. But the professional who enters it in 2030 may be almost unrecognisable to someone who entered it in 2010.

Finance Leaders Rank AI Above Accounting Expertise

The iplicit research does not exist in a vacuum. Deloitte’s Finance Trends 2026 report, drawing on more than 1,300 global finance leaders, placed AI and automation at the top of the skills development agenda. Its Q4 2025 CFO Signals survey found 87% of North American finance chiefs at billion-dollar-plus companies rating AI as extremely or very important to their operations in 2026. A joint AICPA and CIMA CFO survey of nearly 1,500 senior leaders worldwide reported that 88% expect AI to be the defining technology trend in accounting within two years.

The consensus is unusually broad. What makes it noteworthy is not the direction, which has been signposted for years, but the speed at which sentiment has consolidated. As recently as 2023, Gartner recorded AI adoption in finance functions at 37%. By 2025, that figure had reached 59%. The acceleration has been sharp enough to catch many finance teams mid-stride, aware of where they need to go but uncertain how quickly they can get there.

Controllers Feel the Heat More Than CFOs

The iplicit CFO survey captured something that headline statistics often flatten: the experience of this transition varies enormously depending on where you sit in the hierarchy. Over half of respondents (51%) said AI already poses a challenge to entry-level roles, and 52% see it reaching senior positions eventually. But financial controllers were far more concerned (74%) than CFOs (48%) or finance directors (45%).

Andy Jackson, a financial controller at iplicit, put it in practical terms. The role, he said, is moving away from the traditional bookkeeper model. Having a technology understanding is becoming as important as having an accounting one. The observation is notable because it comes from someone in the middle of the hierarchy, not from the C-suite where the view tends to be more sanguine and the daily work less directly affected.

Catherine Thompson, who moved from a career in industry accounting to a technology consulting role at iplicit, offered a complementary perspective. The fundamental principles of accounting, she argued, remain as important as ever. What AI has displaced is the repetitive manual work: the reconciliations, the data entry, the calculations that once consumed days. The shift creates a new expectation rather than an absence. Finance professionals now need to understand how automation functions, assess its outputs and bring human judgment to the strategic conversation.

The 92% of iplicit’s respondents who admitted some concern about AI adoption are not, in this reading, expressing fear of obsolescence. They are reckoning with the practical reality of learning new skills mid-career, of staking their professional reputation on tools they did not train on, and of navigating career paths that no longer follow a predictable route from trainee to partner.

CFO Survey Reveals AI Hiring Boom Across Finance

Here is where the data turns a corner that the broader public narrative around AI and jobs often misses. The iplicit CFO survey found that 67% of finance leaders say their organisations are already creating new roles because of AI. Among those that have fully embedded the technology, 85% have done so. The profession is not simply shrinking. It is sprouting new branches.

Rob Steele, iplicit’s CFO, has drawn a parallel with the rise of revenue operations specialists in modern sales teams: hybrid roles that blend analytical discipline with commercial fluency. The future finance professional, in his framing, is less a keeper of records and more an interpreter of data, someone who translates accounting outputs into strategic intelligence the wider business can act on.

The most instructive data point in the iplicit research may be the one that received the least attention. Among finance leaders still planning their AI adoption, 32% worried about automation reducing their role. Among those who had fully adopted it, the figure dropped to 17%. The gap suggests that much of the anxiety surrounding AI in finance is anticipatory rather than experiential. Once people work with the technology, the fear tends to recede. That is a pattern worth noting for every finance leader currently managing a team through this transition.

CFO Survey Highlights Gap Between Ambition and Execution

If the direction of travel commands broad agreement, the profession’s ability to keep pace does not. The AICPA and CIMA study identified generative AI as the largest skills gap (56% of respondents), while broader technology competencies concerned 37%. Skills shortages and low motivation were cited as the top barriers to productivity improvement.

Deloitte’s research sharpens the picture further. Nearly two-thirds of finance leaders plan to build more technical capability into their teams over the next two fiscal years. Yet only 21% said their AI investments had delivered measurable returns so far, and just 14% had fully integrated AI agents into operations. Steve Gallucci, who leads Deloitte’s global and US CFO Program, has noted that many finance chiefs are looking to advanced technologies not only to improve efficiency within finance but to help their organisations respond more quickly to shifting market dynamics. The intent is there. The execution is lagging.

Compounding the challenge is a thinning talent pipeline. CPA exam candidate numbers have declined over the past decade. Accounting graduate volumes have followed. Ben Crow, iplicit’s VP of partnerships, has pointed to what he sees as part of the problem: aggressive messaging about job replacement that is discouraging people from entering the profession at all. The more positive and, he argues, more accurate message is that finance careers are durable, but they will require comfort with technology that previous generations did not need.

Bookkeeping Endures but the Job Description Does Not

Double-entry bookkeeping has survived the calculator, the spreadsheet and the ERP system. It will survive artificial intelligence. The foundational logic of accounting is not what any of these surveys call into question. What they describe is a broadening of the skill set required to work effectively around those foundations.

The collective weight of CFO survey evidence now paints a consistent picture across the UK mid-market, North American corporates and global professional bodies. Finance functions are being reshaped by technology at a pace that has outrun many organisations’ ability to adapt their hiring, training and career structures. The professionals who thrive will likely be those who treat AI not as a threat to be managed or a trend to be followed but as a tool that enlarges the scope of what finance can contribute to a business.

That is not a story of decline. Nor, given the readiness gaps that persist, is it a story of seamless progress. It is something more familiar to anyone who has watched a profession absorb a major technological shift: a messy, uneven, ultimately productive adjustment that rewards those who engage with it early and honestly. The CFO survey data suggests the profession knows this. Acting on it is the harder part.