A conversation I had with a candidate recently led me to a deep dive into reports that suggest PwC UK is restructuring its audit teams, making some associate and senior associate roles redundant, as automation and AI tools now handle many of the tasks those professionals once performed.
It is a sign of things to come, and it raises an important question: If AI takes over the entry-level work, what happens to the next generation of auditors?
The Shift from Human Doing to Human Overseeing
For decades, the audit career path has been a steady climb. New professionals begin as associates, learning through testing, sampling, and reconciliation work. Over time and as their career progresses, they moved into judgment-based reviews, client relationships and developing new business.
Now, the foundational work is being automated.
Modern audit tools powered by AI can:
- Analyse entire transaction populations, not just samples.
- Flag anomalies instantly.
- Generate working papers, reports, and draft conclusions in seconds.
What once took weeks can now happen overnight. This is more than just an efficiency change, it is a complete shift in how audits are performed and how auditors learn.
The Contradiction of Progress
This transformation is exciting. AI removes repetitive work, reduces error, and allows auditors to focus on what really matters: risk, judgment, ethics, and insight.
However, there is a paradox. If AI handles the basic work, how do junior auditors develop the experience and judgment that underpin the profession?
Audit has always relied on learning by doing. When foundational roles disappear, the traditional training pipeline weakens. The risk is creating a generation of auditors who understand how to interpret results but not how those results are produced.
A New Kind of Auditor
Audit is not dying, far from it… but it is evolving.
The next generation of auditor will need a new blend of skills:
- Data fluency: Understanding how AI tools work, their limitations, and how to validate outputs.
- Professional scepticism: not only of clients but also of the systems providing the evidence.
- Judgment and communication: translating AI insights into business understanding and trust.
- Ethical oversight: ensuring that automation remains transparent, fair, and accountable.
Auditors will not disappear, but what it means to audit will expand.
What’s Next?
Over the next 10 years, we are likely to see:
- Fewer entry-level roles, and more specialised positions in areas such as AI assurance, audit analytics, and data quality
- Continuous, live audits, with systems monitoring transactions in real time.
- Greater focus on governance, ethics, and technology risk.
- A profession that is smaller in number but broader in scope.
The Upshot
AI isn’t replacing auditors, but it is taking over some of the routine work they used to do. This change is forcing the audit profession to adapt faster than ever.
For accounting firms, it means rethinking how they train and grow their people. For auditors, it means getting comfortable with new technology and learning continuously. For the profession, it means reimagining what trust means when much of the work is done by algorithms.
The future of audit is human and AI working together. The real challenge is making sure that as we automate the work, we don’t lose the experience and judgment that make great auditors so valuable.
References
https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/audit-assurance/next-generation-audit.html
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2024/feb/what-ai-can-do-for-auditors
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1467089525000107
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/reimagining-audit-with-ai-technology.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468227624002266
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