4/13/2026
Firms Substitute AI for Humans
WSJ 4/10/2026
Accounting firms are scaling back the role of human auditors in routine
testing of things like payroll and revenue contracts, long a critical part of
their work, amid a greater reliance on AI agents.
KPMG said it plans to remove humans from routine testing so they can
focus on more complicated tasks, while “orchestration agents”—which
autonomously manage several agents, potentially more than 20—handle testing
duties. That switch will start with a pilot program this summer, with plans for
full AI agent deployment on certain tests next year.
While human auditors won’t perform routine testing, they will still
review it, work on data collection and do risk assessment. Of these four areas
of the audit, only routine testing was listed as having no human audit team
associated with it within two to three years, according to a presentation in a
KPMG briefing.
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“Tomorrow, for those routine transactions, I think there will be next to
no human beings in that bubble,” said Thomas Mackenzie, KPMG’s audit chief
digital officer. “It will all be agents and orchestrators doing it.”
Accounting firms are working to change how traditional auditing work is
done, with the aim of taking away younger professionals’ rote work and allowing
them more critical thinking.
Routine testing includes payroll, expense vouching, cash procedures,
search for unrecorded liabilities, accounts receivable, acquisitions of new
buildings and equipment, and the cost of goods sold. Human auditors, for years,
pulled a finite sample of these items, extracted the data into an Excel
spreadsheet, applied auditing guidelines, and marked whether the items passed
or failed.
AI tools now run alongside traditional human audits to compare results
and ensure quality control. Firms in recent years have used AI agents for
testing, but that work has been limited. At KPMG, AI agents are prompted by
people to conduct a discrete set of tasks with humans evaluating tests and
moving them to other agents to complete the work.
Some Big Four firm leaders estimate that agents will contribute between
20% and 30% of a typical financial audit by 2029, essentially the proportion of
the human effort that will be removed.
At
KPMG, AI agents are prompted to do certain tasks and are vetted by humans who
then pass the work along to other AI agents for completion. Eduardo Parra/Zuma
Press
“It sounds like we’re just slicing the bottom of the pyramid off,”
Mackenzie said. “We’re lifting the pyramid up.”
Testing is a key part of auditors’ assessment of company financial
statements. Auditors are required to examine specific business transactions and
financial documents to verify that they actually exist, and are recorded and
accounted for accurately.
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The stakes for accurate auditing are high, as failures can result in
billions of dollars in costs to investors. Regulators are just starting to
develop frameworks around AI in auditing. Last week, the U.K.’s Financial
Reporting Council issued guidance on how firms should use these tools, warning
that the human auditor is always accountable.
While the firms vary on timelines, they generally agree that AI agents
will increasingly handle routine testing—such as payroll and expense
vouching—to improve efficiency and data accuracy.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is attempting to apply AI agents to more advanced
testing, such as assessing whether revenue for U.S. pharmaceutical rebates was
recorded properly, said Shawn Panson, the firm’s U.S. assurance transformation
leader.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
expects its AI agents to take on audit tasks involving more judgment over time.
yves herman/Reuters
The firm’s evidence-match tool, which automatically matches information
between two sets of records, can process 30 types of documents from a client,
Panson said. Six months ago, the tool could only read basic PDFs.
Panson said he expects AI agents to be able to ingest more information
and take on audit tasks involving more judgment over time, while humans
continue to provide oversight.
At Ernst & Young, auditor agents will soon be talking with the agents
of its clients about audit testing procedures, among other things.
In changes being piloted now, EY’s agents are making preliminary
selections of financial statement data and requests for supporting information.
Clients’ agents will collect supporting details and send them to EY’s agents,
which will use that to prepare working papers that are then reviewed by humans.
“The routine areas are absolutely where we see the opportunity to
increase a different amount of technology and automation,” said Richard
Jackson, EY’s global and Americas assurance AI leader. This week, EY globally
launched new agentic AI capabilities for auditors and clients.
The quality of AI agents will improve as they are able to more accurately
spot inconsistencies in data, Jackson said. That could involve making key
catches in revenue contracts spanning hundreds of pages, for example.
This
week EY launched new agentic AI capabilities for auditors and clients. Jakub
Porzycki/Zuma Press
“The ability to say a memo or a piece of analysis talked about something
in a certain way, but that doesn’t correspond or isn’t supported by the
underlying data, is incredibly powerful,” he said.
Deloitte & Touche opts for a more conservative, human-centric public
stance to reassure their clients on human accountability and audit quality.
Deloitte, which includes Deloitte & Touche in its global network, sponsors
CFO Journal.
The firm views agentic AI as enhancing the human auditor’s capabilities
to continuously improve audit quality, not replacing them, said Will Bible, the
firm’s digital products leader.
“While AI will transform how we execute testing and improve efficiency,
audit quality ultimately depends on human judgment, professional skepticism and
accountability,” Bible said.
This shift doesn’t necessarily signal a decline in the hiring of junior
auditors, KPMG’s Mackenzie said.
He won’t hire a college graduate anymore to create workpapers, he said.
Instead, he’s looking for someone who grasps the findings of a workpaper with
the assistance of AI.
“Audit know-how is still going to be gold,” Mackenzie said. “We need
that.”
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 14, 2026, print edition as 'CPAs’ Role in Key Part
of Audits Fades In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is
Shrinking Fast'.
Mark Maurer is a reporter on
The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Journal team. Based in New York, he writes about
corporate finance, accounting, auditing and regulation of companies. Before
joining the Journal, he covered New York commercial real estate as associate
web editor and reporter at The Real Deal. Prior to that, he was a copy editor
at the Star-Ledger. He completed the Knight-Bagehot fellowship program in
economics and business journalism at Columbia University in 2019.
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