Can AI Replace CFOs? Accounting Podcast explores executive automation

[music] [music] Hey everyone and welcome back to the podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the accounting profession. I'm Blake Oliver and

I'm David Liry and I'm beat Blake. I got that shingles vaccine this week and it's hitting me. So I'm going to push through though for the show for the listeners. We we got to push through here.

The show must go on. Today we're talking about whether or not AI could replace CFOs and other top executives, some new survey data on what US adults think about that. And an EA time tracked 188 IRS calls and reported the results and we've got them for you. All that and more in this episode of the accounting podcast. But first, David, let's thank our sponsors.

Our sponsors this week, we have numeral savant labs and cloud accountant staffing. Are you tired of payroll headaches getting in the way of your client experience that you want to deliver? Manual workflows creating bottlenecks, compliance nightmares, and endless support calls that go nowhere. There's a better way for your team and your clients. Onpay is the payroll partner that accountants and bookkeepers actually love. Why? Because it's easy to use, packed with value, and backed by support that actually supports you. Their team gets rave reviews for being fast, expert, and actually reachable when you need them. Onpay handles all the heavy lifting. You get a dedicated onboarding support specialist who sets up worker profiles, transfers year-to- date data from previous providers, all at no extra cost. Their seamless QuickBooks and Zero integrations eliminate manual journal entries, and they support any type of businesses you serve. Farms, restaurants, nonprofits, you name it. OnPay can even handle unique requirements without adding complexity. And AMP keeps pricing simple, too. Everything your clients expect from multi-state filing to off-cycle payuns, it's included. No hidden fees, no surprises. To book a demo, head over to accountingpodcast.promo. That is accountingpodcast.promo p a y.

Thank you, so much for supporting us over the years and being our lead sponsor. Please do use those links. That lets them know that you found them through the podcast. They appreciate knowing where you came from and it helps us get more sponsors. All right, David, let's talk about whether or not AI can replace CFOs and other top executives. This is something I've wondered about myself because I'm automating more and more of my job as a CEO, as a founder. Uh, and like a lot of it, just following up on stuff, pushing stuff forward, a lot of it is automatable. And you've you've seen that you've been getting these emails from me and comments and and all this stuff that's now

a small or where like you're directly

all the reports kind of roll back into you, right? So I think there's more tasking. But if you think about it like at a bigger corporation, the CEO has this team of people that are just building slide decks for them. So I don't know if this if the CEO could be replaced by AI, but their direct his that that next layer of direct staff under the CEO. Yes.

Maybe people who are mostly just doing project management executing that CEO's vision perhaps. Let's see what the survey data says about how Americans feel about this. Watchchest surveyed over 2,000 US adults and asked them whether AI should replace CEOs, CFOs, and other senior executives. And a lot of Americans are in favor of this. There's a steep gender divide, though. So, get this. It's 45% of men who favor replacement. 45% of men say, "I would be happy if they replaced these executives with AI.

Men hate their bosses." Okay.

But only 25% of women said that.

I mean, that's a 20 percentage point difference, right? quarter of women, almost half of men. The survey uh gatherer Watch test, this company that did the survey, they suggested that women may be more reluctant to remove remove human judgment from decisions involving jobs, ethics, culture, employee well-being, privacy, and accountability. Support also changed depending on how much money you make. So people earning $150,000 to $200,000 a year supported this the most. The upper middle income spectrum, upper middle class, and that peaked at 55%. So over half of those earning 150 to 200k a year supported replacing executives with AI.

I could have a theory on that.

Tell me why.

Okay. The average bottom of the rung employees and possibly most of middle America has never talked to the CEO, has never met the CEO, and definitely has never worked with the CEO or been in a meeting with the CEO. But people that are high income probably have higher level management positions and they either think the CEO is an idiot. They don't trust the CEO. They they're like, "Our team does all the work for the CEO." So at the income is probably just based on people's experience with CEOs. And maybe at that income level, you're sort of in the middle of the corporate hierarchy. Yeah. Where you're getting all these ridiculous demands from on top and you are supposed to somehow execute these crazy visions, you know, the shade of yellow in a slide deck. Yeah.

Yeah. There's bad executives, right? And you are at the at the mercy of them and then you have to implement that and, you know, tell that to all the people that work for you. I mean, you know, if you if you think that management at your company is dysfunctional, which it can often be at a big company, then yeah, I mean, you would support it, right? Uh so I was thinking about this, right? Like let's think about this from the CFO perspective. We are seeing AI absorbing a lot of the work that finance teams do. It's taken over with forecasting, monitoring, month-end close workflows, strategy support, M&A type analysis, all of that. I mean, AI is everybody is using it. If you are in a role where you have to do complicated spreadsheet analysis and you're not using like cloud co-work by now, I mean, you're you're a dinosaur at this point.

Yeah.

If your company allows it and so many people are using it even if their company doesn't allow it. I think we talked about on the show a week or two ago,

shadow AI use, what's that called?

Shadow AI use is like a third of employees. Uh, and so, you know, I mean, but but let's let's tackle the question of whether or not AI could actually replace these leaders. And my my take is definitely no. Not at this point. Because the thing you have to do to make it work right now is you have to really monitor it and you have to correct it. You have to read all this analysis that it gives you and then you have to tell it where to go. And if you just let it operate autonomously, you get terrible results at this point. So I am spending a ton of my time now just getting through a bunch of simultaneous chats that I've going. I might have 20 going at a time and reading what it gave me and then telling it what to do next, which actually is is hard. It's exhausting. Oh yeah, I'm I'm same boat. I have a couple AI agents doing different things and yeah, you're constantly looking back where you at reviewing. It's a lot of context switching switching more than ever. Like the the again we talked about this months ago that cognitive load even though more's getting done and you feel more productive,

it's it's not it's still a lot of work. Like you're not actually doing less work. You're actually working your ass off, but it's just going so much faster. And that's why it's exhausting. you're working your brain instead of sitting in meetings and then delegating in meetings all day long, which if I have to choose, I'm absolutely going to choose the current system of AI doing this project management for me and me directing it. It's it's so much better. I don't have to sit around and wait. Uh but I have to have so many chats going because I can't just sit there and wait for it to chug away. I mean, I I get bored instantly. I'm just sitting there while, you know, it goes and it and it takes a while to get back to you sometimes, right? minutes and I just so then I have too many going and then like you said I'm context switching and it gets mentally tiring mentally exhausting and that's one of the reasons why I think we're going to end up working a lot well you know whether we work fewer hours is I know debatable but I don't think it's possible to be like doing what I'm doing and work more than six solid hours a day like I can't do it I am exhausted at the end

from the mental load the hours work that we may do is going to still feel like 40, but we might only be working 18. It's just going to feel like 40

because you're doing heavier reps with your brain, right? Instead of just sitting in meetings all day, which is a different kind of endurance,

exhaustion. Yeah.

Yeah. So, that's my take. Uh I should say I spotted this thanks to CFO.com. Uh they covered this in uh on their site. [snorts] Um oh, I should also add the regions mattered. This is interesting. The West Coast supported this the most at 42%. Followed by the Northeast at 38, the South at 30 and the Midwest way behind at 18%. So Midwesterners don't think this is a good idea. Don't want this. But Californians, Arizonans Washingtonians Oregonians I guess, you know, uh they they like it. So I guess the question too is and a great follow-up would be does this say that people trust AI to run a company or does it just indicate how much they don't like the humans who are

I think satisfaction survey.

Yeah.

Yeah. But it would be interesting to like somehow run a test of this is like create a company, a business and put an AI in charge and uh you know as like the as the executive team like maybe a team of AI agents and see what happens versus a team of humans. And I think of course you're going to get widely divergent results because you know AI trends toward the middle but like honestly an average executive team could still generate profits for investors. So it might be a strategy.

Man