Industry Insights

The article argues that listening is one of the most important and often overlooked skills in accounting. While technical expertise is essential, strong listening helps accountants build trust with clients, become better managers and leaders, retain talented employees, and have more valuable advisory conversations.

The article compares AI’s impact on accounting to Spotify’s impact on the music industry. Spotify didn’t replace musicians, but it changed how they succeed: producing good music was no longer enough. Artists had to stand out, build an audience and develop stronger relationships with fans.

AI is changing how accountants work, but not the core skills that make them effective. Critical thinking, curiosity, professional scepticism, judgement and communication remain essential, with accountants still responsible for verifying information and deciding whether they are comfortable putting their name to the work—regardless of whether it was produced by a colleague or AI.

Accounting firms can make better people decisions by tracking five key HR benchmarks: promotion rates, staff turnover, employee feedback, leave balances, and hiring quality. Measuring these consistently helps firms identify problems in career development, retention, workload, leadership, and recruitment before they become costly.

Graduate recruitment is becoming more competitive, but the biggest challenge is not AI. It is the growing gap between what graduates believe happens during recruitment and what employers are actually doing. Graduates increasingly feel they are competing in a numbers game, submitting dozens of applications with little feedback. Many assume AI is screening and rejecting their applications, even when firms are reviewing them manually. This perception, combined with a lack of transparency, can quickly erode trust.

Many firms only uncover why employees are unhappy after they've decided to resign, when it's often too late to keep them. Stay interviews are a proactive alternative to exit interviews, giving managers the opportunity to identify concerns early, improve engagement, and reduce turnover. Rather than focusing on performance, stay interviews explore what motivates employees to stay, what frustrates them, and how leaders can better support them. They should be informal, begin early in an employee's tenure, and be held regularly.

When two candidates are equally impressive, the decision comes down to looking beyond resumes and interviews. Instead of relying on instinct, use a structured approach to identify who is the best fit for both the role and your firm's future.

Most accounting graduates have limited practical accounting knowledge, so hiring decisions need to go beyond technical skills alone. While academic performance provides confidence in their understanding of accounting principles, it doesn't show how quickly they'll learn or how effectively they'll solve problems on the job. A Critical Reasoning Ability Test measures a candidate's ability to interpret information, think logically, analyze data, and adapt to unfamiliar situations.

Nearly 20 years ago, I learned a hiring lesson that still shapes every recruitment decision I make. As a new manager leading an overstretched team, I urgently needed extra support. When an internal candidate became available, I relied on instinct and urgency instead of following a structured hiring process. There were no assessments, no objective evidence, and no critical reasoning test—just a quick conversation and the hope that filling the role quickly would solve the problem. It didn't.

Effective onboarding combines preparation, training, support, clear expectations, and cultural integration to help new employees become productive, engaged, and successful as quickly as possible.

AI is changing recruitment by making resumes more polished, tailored, and persuasive than ever before. Candidates can use AI tools to enhance their resumes, match job descriptions, and present their experience more strategically, making it increasingly difficult for employers to determine what a candidate has actually done based on a resume alone. While this isn't necessarily dishonest, it does create a challenge for employers—particularly in accounting and finance roles where technical competence, judgment, and accuracy are critical.

This article focuses on helping accounting firms hire and develop people who can effectively act as the “Human in the Loop” when reviewing AI-generated work and implementing AI responsibly. Rather than discussing AI itself, it explains how existing APPQ Personality and Critical Reasoning assessments can identify individuals with the skills needed to oversee AI outputs.