CPAOne: AI, Analytics and Beyond

Attended the CPA One Conference almost two weeks ago in Ottawa, Ontario. Given that my space is in audit innovation, I attended the more techno-oriented presentations. Here's a summary of the sessions that I attended:

"Big data: Realizing benefits in the age of machine learning and artificial intelligence": The session was kicked off by Oracle's Maria Pollieri. The session delved deep in the detail of machine learning and would have been beneficial to those who were trying to wrap things around thing more from a technical side. She was followed up by Roger's Jane Skoblo. She mentioned a fact that really grabbed my attention: when a business can just increase its accessibility to data by 10%; it can result in up to $65 million increase in benefits.

The next day started with Pete's and Neeraj's session on audit automation, "Why nobody loves the audit". They want over a survey of auditors and clients on the key pain points of the external audit. It turns out that these challenges are actually shared by both. For example, clients lack context on "the why" things are being collected, while auditors found it difficult to work with clients who lacked such context. On the data side, clients have hard time gathering docs and data, while the auditors spent too much time gathering this information. From a solutions perspective, the presenters discussed how Auvenir puts a process around gathering the data and enables better communication. This will be explored in future posts when we look at process standardization as a key pre-requisite to getting AI into the audit. 

The keynote on this day was delivered by Deloitte Digital's Shawn Kanungo, "The 0 to 100 effect". The session was well-received as he discussed the different aspects of exponential change and its impact on the profession (which was discussed previously here). One of the key takeaways I had from his presentation was how a lot of innovation is recombining ideas that already exist. Check this video he posted that highlights some of the points from his talk:



Also, checked out the presentation by Kevin Kolliniatis from KPMG and Chris Dulny from PwC, "AI and the evolution of the audit". Chris did a good job breaking down AI and made it digestible for the crowd. Kevin highlighted Mindbridge.ai in his presentation noting the link that AI is key for identifying unusual patterns.

That being said, the continuing challenge is how do we get data out of the systems in manner that's reliable (e.g. it's the right data, for the right period, etc.) and is understood (e.g. we don't have to go back and forth with the client to understand what they sent).

Last but not least was "Future of finance in a digital world" with Grant Abrams and Tahanie Thabet from Deloitte. They broke down how digital technologies are reshaping the way the finance department. As I've expressed here, one of the keys is to appreciate the difference between AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). So I thought it was really beneficial that they actually showed how such automation can assist with moving data from invoices into the system (the demo was slightly different than the one that can be seen below, but illustrates the potential of RPA). They didn't get into a lot of detail on blockchain but mentioned it is relevant to the space (apparently they have someone in the group that specifically tackles these types of conversations).


Kudos to CPA Canada for tackling these leading-edge topics! Most of these sessions were well attended and people asked questions wanting to know more. It's through these types of open forums that CPAs can learn to embrace the change that we all know is coming.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

Will auditors go the way of horses?

In late 2015, MIT Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew Mcafee penned an article entitled, will "Humans go the way of horse labour?"

The article explores how the mechanization of farm labour serves as a model of exploring the automation of knowledge work citing the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief. They state:

"In 1983, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief brought the debate into sharp relief through a clever comparison of humans and horses. For many decades, horse labor appeared impervious to technological change. Even as the telegraph supplanted the Pony Express and railroads replaced the stagecoach and the Conestoga wagon, the U.S. equine population grew seemingly without end, increasing sixfold between 1840 and 1900 to more than 21 million horses and mules. The animals were vital not only on farms but also in the country’s rapidly growing urban centers.

But then, with the introduction and spread of the internal combustion engine, the trend rapidly reversed. As engines found their way into automobiles in the city and tractors in the countryside, horses became largely irrelevant. By 1960, the U.S. counted just 3 million horses, a decline of nearly 88 percent in just over half a century. If there had been a debate in the early 1900s about the fate of the horse in the face of new industrial technologies, someone might have formulated a “lump of equine labor fallacy,” based on the animal’s resilience up till then. But the fallacy itself would soon be proved false: Once the right technology came along, most horses were doomed as labor."

The MIT Professors are not alone in sounding the alarm when it comes to how automation can impact labour. Others includes Thomas Piketty, Douglas Rushkoff, Martin Ford and Nick Carr. 

If the techno-distopians are right, then there will need to be a fundamental alteration of the way the economic system is structured to address the unemployed masses. Such masses are not likely going to take such things lying down. For example, in response to the Great Depression there were mass demonstrations in Washington DC where thousands protested their plight. In January 1932, Cox's Army of 25,000 assembled in the capital to protest their poverty. Later that year, the Bonus Army of 43,000 marched on Washington in the summer to demand the US government pay the bonus promised early:



Alternatively, if the techno-utopians are right, such as Peter Diamandis and others at Singularity university, then such  protests won't be necessary: the system will make changes proactively to ensure that the gains made from exponential technologies are made available to the majority.

The point is that either way actions must occur at the political level to make the changes necessary to  address the deeply embedded economic architecture.

Consequently, working within the status quo leads to one actionable option: "Race with the Machine".

Prior to penning the article I cited above, MIT Professors Erik Brynjolfsson And Andrew Mcafee proposed that the path forward requires "man and machine" to work together:

This is essentially how IBM's cognitive system, Watson, was positioned when it comes to doctors and medicine: doctors delegate the task treatment research to Watson, while they determine what is the right treatment for their cancer patients. For example, doctors and Watson were able to work together and determine what the correct treatment was for a 60 year old Japanese patient. 

How can this be applied to financial audit? 

Firstly, the scope of the audit is driven by optimizing the cost-benefit curve. Consequently, there is a potential to get greater assurance for the same amount of resources allocated. Keep in mind that if auditors had to audit all transactions,  the organization could go bankrupt just trying pay the audit bill. Consequently, auditors only look at transaction on a test basis.

However, with the increased datafication of an organization's interactions with stakeholders, there is an opportunity - that didn't previously exist - to analyze these interactions for audit insights.

Take for example a Business to Consumer (B2C) company, like Dell, that interacts with its customers via social media. In 2005, there was an infamous spat between a CUNY journalism professor, Jeff Jarvis, and Dell computers (original post here). Jarvis was irate over the customer service and has been an Apple customer since. Such conversations can be mined for potential audit implications. In this particular instance, it could be a means to assess the adequacy of the sales returns allowance - developing a model based on how many other customers have complained via blogs, twitter or other social media about the B2C company and then assessing whether the provision is adequate.

Previously, such an analysis would be cost prohibitive and wouldn't make sense for the auditor to even considering such a thing. For example, the B2C company would need to record all conversations and then have auditor listen to thousands of hours of conversations to see whether such an issue actually exists.

This is not to say that it is currently feasible to run such an analysis.  Tools that aggregate, standardize and analyze such unstructured text could be argued to be in their infancy. However, datafication combined with further advances in social analytic tools (see video below for an example) in is the first step to a world where such analysis could be feasible.

The second separate but related issue is the role of the regulators in opening or closing the gate on innovation.

Some may mistakenly believe that this due to the regulated nature of audit. However, audit is not the only arena where innovation is shaped by the “regulator”. In fact, the success or failure of innovation  depends on how the incumbents who govern the landscape make way for the new technology (or not).

Take for example the rise of the iPhone in the corporate environment. What allowed consumerization to take place (i.e. allowing users to connect their favourite smartphone devices to the network instead of the corporate devices) was that Microsoft took an open approach to licensing it Exchange Active Sync. They could have created a walled garden that allowed Windows Phone only to connect to their email server, however, they paved the way for iPhone and Android to connect their devices to the corporate email server. Microsoft as the "regulator" of which mobile device can connect to its mail server enabled the iPhone and Android to displace our beloved BlackBerries from the corporate environment. Had Microsoft saw more profit in walling off the market for its own devices the ability for Apple iDevice to disrupt corporate IT would have been stifled if not suffocated.

On the opposite side, David Sarnoff of RCA squashed FM radio in order to protect his AM Radio technology and pave the way for television. The inventor, Edwin Armstrong, who initially was Sarnoff's friend, had mistakenly shared his technological innovations with him only to be betrayed by him. FM Radio technology had the potential to share data, such as faxes, back in the 1930s. One can only imagine the state of the wireless technology had RCA allowed this technology to flourish. 

Similarly, in 1934, AT&T blocked the answering machine for fear that it would undermine their business because "ability to record voice would cause business people to shun the telephone for fear of having their conversations recorded". So although much innovation came out of AT&T's Bell labs, the point is that it was effectively acting as the "regulator" which determined which innovations were permitted in the telecommunications industry and which ones were not. 

Consequently, the regulators (e.g. SEC, PCAOB, AICPA, etc.) will have a significant role to play on how innovation will unfold with the arena of audit. It is ultimately they who are going to weigh and assess what constitutes reasonable assurance actually is.  

Where are the regulators currently at? 

Well it seems that they are looking to technology to actually improve audit quality. In a May 2017 speech, PCAOB Board Member Jeanette M. Franzel noted in the section "Impact of Technology on Audit" that:

"If managed and implemented properly, these developments have the potential to enhance the value of the audit process and increase audit quality." [emphasis added]

To be sure it's not all rainbows and unicorns. Board Member Franzel did see "potentially disruptive changes will present challenges and threats across the auditing profession". However, at least there is an appetite to explore how such technologies can improve audit quality, expand what more can be done within audits and enable auditors to race with the machine.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else.

RPA and the Accountant: A path out of the mundane?

One of the latest hype technologies is Robot Process Automation (RPA).

My first question when coming across this, is what is the difference between this and cognitive computing? 

As can be seen by these videos, it's more about "dumb" automation instead of "smart" innovation: where routine tasks are handled by the system instead of a person. This is in contrast to something like IBM's Watson, which attempts to understand language and offer probabilistic judgments as to what is the right answer to a question like it did on Jeopardy!


The first video (produced by Deloitte UK) does a great job of actually showing us how RPA can automate the process of extracting information/documents from email and the generating invoices through the company's ERP:

The strength of this video (produced by EY) is showing us the business case for RPA:

The idea is that RPA can automate routine tasks, instead of offshoring. In other words, it brings the world of automation onced reserved for the assembly line to the back office.

As described in this Deloitte publication, it puts RPA as the first step towards a cognitive enterprise - automate the task and then bring cognitive, AI, machine learning, etc., into the process to make it smarter.

To use a maturity model approach, RPA is the first level in bringing together the necessary data and processes to actually train the algorithm to make it smarter.

What does this mean for auditors and accountants?

For accountants, the back office is going to require less people in terms of executing these mundane tasks.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that jobs will be lost.

As with the advent of cloud computing, the enterprises will have to determine whether such talent can be used more effectively to improve the quality of financial reporting and work on the back log of finance projects that haven't been attended due to staff working on these low-value tasks. That being said, the problem of meeting quarterly targets to feed investors insatiable desire for profits is something that can't be ignored when discussing whether management will choose profits over better processes.

For auditors the story is a little different.

The reality of the profession is that it can't retain talent because people find the work unsustainable: it's hard to shutdown your personal life for a third of the year or more to meet the needs of clients during busy season.

RPA and automation could make the profession more sustainable, as these mundane tasks could be handed to a system instead of a junior. This is similar to the "race with the machine" concept I mentioned in this post, when referring how Watson is helping doctors treat cancer.  Auditor could then focus on more value added tasks, such as assessing aggregate risks, industry trends, etc. Such insights will improve audit quality and give clients better understanding of business and audit risks, making the work more interesting for both auditors and auditees alike.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else.