PwC is training junior accountants to be like managers, because AI is going to be doing the entry-level work

Business Insider

a day ago

Think you can do your boss's job? If you're a junior accountant, you might soon find out.
New hires at PwC will be doing the roles that managers are doing within three years, because they will be overseeing AI performing routine, repetitive audit tasks, Jenn Kosar, AI assurance leader at PwC, told Business Insider in an interview.
"People are going to walk in the door almost instantaneously becoming reviewers and supervisors," she said.
PwC, one of the "Big Four" accounting and consulting firms, is deploying AI to take over tasks like data gathering and processing. This is leaving entry-level employees free to focus on "more advanced and value-added work," Kosar said.
"Three years from now, we will feel like the first years are functioning more like fourth years," she said. "We will look back and say, 'Okay, these young people feel more like the managers of my day.'"
AI has got PwC rethinking how it trains junior employees
Kosar said the technology meant PwC was changing how it trains its junior employees, adding that entry-level workers have to know how to review and supervise the AI's work.
Where the Big Four firm once focused on teaching young employees to execute audit tasks, it's now focused on more "back to basics" training and the fundamentals of what an audit should do for a client, she said.
There's more time in the programming to teach junior employees deeper critical thinking, negotiation, and "professional skepticism," she said, adding they previously would have been trained in these soft skills later in their careers.
'Assurance for AI'
AI is rapidly pushing the industry in new directions. Kosar was a partner in its digital assurances and transparency division before her role as AI assurance lead was created in July 2024. PwC's " assurance for AI" product, which works with clients on ensuring the AI they use is operated responsibly, has only existed since June.
For all its potential, AI is challenging the Big Four's long-held business models, organizational structures, and day-to-day roles.
Firms are having to consider outcomes-based pricing models based on results instead of billing clients by the hour.
Alan Paton, a former partner in PwC UK's financial services division who's now CEO of a Google Cloud solutions consultancy, previously told Business Insider that automation could increasingly cause clients to question why they should pay consultants big money when they can get answers "instantaneously from a tool."
While AI is already transforming more junior roles, Kosar said the technology would eventually affect senior ones.
Partners and managers will have to adapt to new types of requests from clients, who are asking how AI can fully take over certain business tasks, she added.
"It's a shift in how we serve clients as opposed to accelerating progression of capabilities," Kosar told BI.
Kosar acknowledged there was fear AI would reduce critical thinking capabilities and replace jobs, but she said she thought AI would lead to better-informed, faster-developing professionals.
"We will actually get to a better place in terms of how auditing works, how consulting works, and be able to focus on higher value insights and information," she added.