Artificial intelligence and accountancy: Challenging the creative deficit in the accounting profession

A study done in 2015 by Bakshi, Frey and Osborne explored various professions and their resistance to automation. What was discovered is that creativity is the biggest challenge to automation. The accounting profession has been seeing a controversial bitter-sweet disruption in how work is being done as a result of rise in automation. The major effect is observed in current skilled workers within the accounting and financial professions that perform repetitive tasks. This disruption has revealed the creative deficit that exists within the accounting field. This raises the question: What skills can accounting professionals adopt to challenge the creative deficit that has been exposed by the advances in AI? This research paper aims to provide an understanding of this deficit and how it can be challenged by building creativity. In order to do this, we have also studied Teresa Amabile’s componential theory of creativity that breaks down the development of creativity in an individual. This theory comprises three components and we have used qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (questionnaire) research methods to understand how accounting professionals can develop the components.