Episode Details

Accountants should demand systems that reveal the work, respect boundaries, and produce results humans can verify.

Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto, Liz Mason, and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation

Agentic AI does not have to replace an accountant to transform accounting. Its more practical role may be far less dramatic — and far more useful.

In this episode of the Accounting ARC podcast, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, explore how narrowly focused AI agents can help professionals retrieve information, analyze data, navigate systems, and make better-informed decisions.

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Their conversation challenges one of the dominant narratives surrounding agentic AI: that firms should build autonomous digital employees capable of handling everything a staff accountant does. Instead, the hosts envision specialized agents that operate within structured systems, perform clearly defined tasks, and show users how they reach their conclusions.

“If you have agentic AI that’s built into an architecture that already exists, there’s a whole lot more that has to happen from a training perspective,” says Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting.

That architecture, she explains, can include multiple agents working together rather than one agent attempting to handle an entire assignment.