Companies risk a CFO talent crisis by automating junior finance roles
Source: Fortune ·
As AI replaces the entry-level work that trained generations of finance chiefs, CFOs are rethinking how they hire and develop junior talent before the pipeline runs dry.
From the source
The work AI does best is the work nobody wants to do. In finance, that is precisely the problem. For decades, junior accountants learned their trade by reconciling accounts, manually entering data, and grinding through the month-end close. The tasks were tedious, but they built an understanding of the mechanics of finance. It’s now possible to automate much of that work, but doing so removes a crucial stage of training for future finance chiefs. “I really do worry how the next generation of controllers, finance directors and, eventually, CFOs will learn when those entry-level jobs are not the same as what they used to be,” says Catherine Birkett, CFO of London-based payments company GoCardless. An understanding of the data can help finance professionals get more out of AI tools, she argues, and this is often developed in junior finance roles. “A year ago finance chiefs were unsure what difference AI would make. Now every single one of them is using it,” says Mark Freebairn, head of…