Will AI Replace Accountants? Quiz

Answers and explanations appear as you take the quiz.

1. Which accounting task does the guide describe as most readily automated?
   • Negotiating a settlement with a tax authority
   • Estimating an expected credit loss allowance
   • Coding bank transactions and matching them to invoices
   • Signing an audit opinion
2. What happened in the United States after electronic spreadsheets spread in the 1980s, according to the guide?
   • Bookkeeping clerk jobs fell while accountant and financial analyst jobs grew
   • All accounting employment fell sharply
   • Bookkeeping clerk jobs grew while analyst jobs disappeared
   • Accounting employment stayed exactly the same
3. Why can software not take over the role of signing audit opinions and tax returns?
   • Software cannot read financial statements
   • Tax returns must be handwritten
   • Signing is purely ceremonial
   • Licensed accountants are legally accountable for what they sign
4. Which factor does the guide link to the US shortage of new accountants?
   • A surplus of accounting graduates
   • Fewer students choosing accounting and sitting for the CPA exam, alongside retirements
   • A ban on automation in accounting firms
   • The elimination of the CPA license
5. Why is applying revenue recognition rules (ASC 606 or IFRS 15) to a complex contract harder to automate than transaction coding?
   • The standards are secret
   • Contracts are always stored on paper
   • It involves ambiguous facts and judgment, and errors are costly
   • Software cannot perform addition
6. What does the guide identify as the real risk AI poses to the profession's future?
   • Clients will stop needing financial statements
   • Juniors may lose the routine work they used to learn the basics from
   • Regulators will ban AI tools
   • Spreadsheets will become obsolete
7. A tax preparer uses a language model to draft a research memo. What risk does the guide say must be checked?
   • The memo may be too short
   • The model may refuse to discuss tax
   • The memo will always favor the tax authority
   • The model may cite rules that do not exist or are out of date
8. Which three factors does the guide suggest using to rate how exposed an accounting task is to automation?
   • How structured the inputs are, the cost of an error, and whether a named professional must stand behind the result
   • The task's billing rate, office location and software vendor
   • The number of staff, the client's industry and the time of year
   • Whether the task uses spreadsheets, email or paper