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Emerging Technology in the Accounting Industry: Instrument not Obstacle

In recent years, the Big 4 accounting firms have placed an increasing emphasis on emerging technology. This can be seen from their graduate recruitment process. Recruitment screening assessments increasingly ask how candidates, as newly appointed auditors, would use emerging technologies.

The audit process has been vastly altered by emerging technologies. The improvement in technology has triggered a systematic shift that is causing the role of auditors to change. This has been met with a mixed and often negative reception. This is understandable given that work traditionally done by accountants, and other professions, is being cannibalized by technology. Bookkeeping is the biggest example of an accounting role that is being transformed by emerging technology, and this will have effects on multiple professions (Green, n.d).

Does this mean that the accounting skillset is losing its value? Is there still a future in accounting? Looking at a dataset of occupations in various countries, it is notable that “Accountant” came out as the 8th most sought after profession (Michael Page, 2015). Accountants are in high demand in many countries worldwide including America, Korea, Canada, and Australia. This only includes countries where accounting is in high demand country wide. If we segment countries by region, we find that New Zealand also has a skill shortage, with Accountants being in particularly high demand in Auckland and Wellington. Clearly accounting is still a relevant profession.

Changes that occur due to emerging technology are likely to be mostly positive. The most obvious improvement to the work lives of auditors is the automation of repetitive menial tasks. Most financial statements and documents are electronic in nature or start out as a physical document that ends up being scanned into a computer. The fact that documents are stored electronically paired with bookkeeping software means that collecting relevant statements and documents for the audit can be done more effectively and efficiently. This greatly reduces the annoyance of reviewing paper financial statements, and since it is possible to search for specific values or titles with ease on any device, this drastically reduces the amount of time wasted trying to create an audit trail from paper document to paper document.

Due to this increase in efficiency, the accounting industry has placed a great emphasis on technological competency, and tertiary level courses now place significant weight not only on exploring the theoretical and practical issues of accounting but also on helping students to understand the technological systems that play a large role in the profession. This provides students with a good base to start with, and keeping up to date with new emerging technologies will put candidates in a favorable position when undertaking recruitment assessments. During these assessments candidates are often required to review a few emerging technologies in a case study and state how they could be applied in a certain scenario. This can be a difficult task as you have only around 5 minutes to create a video recorded answer. If you do not have any prior knowledge of the specific technologies then this will leave you with only the information provided in the case, which will make it difficult for you to stand out from other candidates.

By embracing the changing environment brought about by emerging technology, accounting graduates will not only increase their ability to adapt to changes in the field but also their chances of securing a role after graduation and their ability to hit the ground running from day one. Being proficient in emerging technologies will give accounting graduates an edge and mean that they have less catching up to do when climbing the ladder to success.

Ettienne du Plessis is currently completing his Master of Professional Accounting at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed his degree in Accounting and Commercial Law. He is diligently working towards becoming a Chartered Accountant.

Image: Unsplash

References

Green, S. (n.d). What’s The Future of Bookkeeping? Lets Take a Look. https://www.workflowmax.com/blog/bookkeeping/the-future-of-bookkeeping

Michael Page. (2015). Most In-Demand Professions Dataset [Data set]. Michael Page. https://www.michaelpage.co.uk/minisite/most-in-demand-professions/

New Zealand Immigration. (2020) Skills shortage list checker Accounting (General). Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, New Zealand Immigration. https://skillshortages.immigration.govt.nz/accountant-general/

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