Why Curiosity Is Becoming the Most Important Skill for Accountants in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the accounting profession. Increasingly, transactions are coded automatically, reconciliations are handled by software, and anomalies are flagged by algorithms rather than humans. The efficiency gains are real.  The profession is changing rapidly.  

But this shift creates a new and underappreciated challenge: the need for curiosity. 

In a world where AI produces much of the output, the accountant’s role is no longer processing – it’s increasingly reviewing the AI output.  Even for bookkeepers and junior accountants. 

From Doer to Reviewer 

As AI becomes embedded in accounting systems, more of the “doing” is automated. That doesn’t eliminate the need for accountants—but it elevates it. Instead of preparing financials, accountants increasingly review, interpret, and validate what AI produces. 

And AI, for all its strengths, makes mistakes, needs training, and the software integration crash. 

AI works on patterns, probabilities, and assumptions. When those assumptions are wrong, the outputs can look plausible—but be wrong. Research consistently shows that while AI can improve efficiency, it still depends heavily on human oversight, judgement, and accountability.  Depending on the issue, problems can be hidden for long periods unless outputs are questioned. 

That’s where curiosity becomes critical. 

A curious accountant doesn’t just accept a number because the system produced it. They ask: 

As a simple example - an AI system might misclassify manufacturing inputs as repairs and maintenance (R&M). The books still balance, but the accountant needs to see the variance in R&M versus budget, investigate what has happened, work out where the costs should be, and recode them.  They then need to work out what was causing the error within the AI tool and fix it.   

A curious accountant spots the variance. Then they dig. 

Curiosity as Professional Skepticism 

Accountants have always been trained in professional skepticism. AI simply raises the stakes. 

Technology can identify patterns, but it cannot understand context in the way humans do. It doesn’t know when something “feels off.”  The accountant might also have expectations unrelated to the simple numbers – what marketing has the client been doing, are there new products, discontinued operations or perhaps macro economic factors (e.g. fuel shortages). 

It’s the mindset that asks “why?” instead of accepting what is presented. 

But curiosity alone isn’t enough. It needs to be paired with conscientiousness—the discipline to verify, test, and follow through. The best accountants in an AI-enabled world will combine both: 

Together, these traits turn AI from a risk into a powerful tool. 

The New Skill Set for Accountants 

If curiosity is the mindset, capability is the enabler. 

To challenge AI effectively, accountants need enough technical understanding to interpret what the system has done—and how to fix it when it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean becoming a data scientist, but it does mean: 

The future accountant is part analyst, part investigator. 

They also need strong numerical reasoning and problem-solving ability. Because when something doesn’t make sense, they need to work backwards and reconstruct the truth. 

Hiring for Curiosity 

This raises an important question: how do we identify curiosity in the first place? 

In personality assessments it shows up as “Openness to Experience”—a tendency to explore ideas, question assumptions, and engage with complexity. 

Then during the working day it’s the candidate who: 

These are not always the candidates with the most polished technical skills—but they are the ones most likely to thrive alongside AI. 

Because the future of accounting isn’t about knowing the answer. 

It’s about knowing when the answer might be wrong. 

Hiring the Accountants of Tomorrow 

AI will continue to automate more of accounting. That’s inevitable. But rather than replacing accountants, it is reshaping their role. 

Routine work will shrink. Judgement, interpretation, and oversight will expand.  And at the centre of all of that is curiosity. 

In an AI-driven world, the most valuable question an accountant can ask is still the simplest one.  “Does this actually make sense?” 

Those are the accountants I’d want to hire.