Lexi, in an age of AI and abundant information, your question has made me reflect upon what, today, makes a profession a profession, and whether this holds true going forward?
Most professions (including ours) are characterised by specialised expertise, developed through formal education, exams, and practical experience, leading to recognised credentials. Members typically adhere to a code of ethics, operate within a culture of service to society, and participate in self-regulation and standard setting, with pride taken in the exercise of professional judgment. As a result, professions (including accountancy) have traditionally been valued by society and have carried social status and trust.
Today, many organisational roles have become increasingly professionalised. Individuals can now access knowledge, tools, and frameworks that enable them to operate at a high technical standard without holding formal professional qualifications. With widening access to information, first through the internet and now through AI-enabled analysis, professions are finding it harder to differentiate themselves from these professionalised roles. It has become easier for non-professionals to achieve reasonable understanding of financial concepts and to meet technical and tecompliance requirements.
The issue is not that professional qualifications have become irrelevant, but that they are increasingly necessary but no longer sufficient as a basis for authority, differentiation, or status. Historically, professions derived their authority from scarce knowledge, lengthy training, and controlled access to credentials. In a world of abundant information, AI‑assisted analysis, and embedded systems of control and compliance, these factors no longer automatically justify privilege, autonomy, or deference.
For finance professionals, this shift places renewed emphasis on areas where technical capability alone is not enough. Ethics and sustainability and strategic decision-making remain domains where ambiguity, value trade-offs, and long-term consequences resist full codification. If expertise is becoming more widely distributed, the future differentiation of the profession lies less in what finance professionals know, and more in the responsibility they are willing to carry, as stewards of organisational performance and long-term value. Management accountants, in particular, must increasingly act as accountable decision-makers under uncertainty, rather than providers of analysis alone.
The emerging value of professions will not lie in outperforming AI, but in exercising informed judgment with AI: interpreting outputs, challenging assumptions, integrating financial and non-financial considerations, and owning the consequences of decisions informed by data and models. As routine professional work becomes increasingly automated or systematised, demand is likely to concentrate in fewer, more senior, more judgment-intensive roles. This implies not the disappearance of the profession, but its narrowing, raising important questions for career pipelines, training models, and the role of professional bodies.
Going forward, the central question for the finance profession may therefore no longer be "How do we defend our technical expertise?" but "For what judgments are we uniquely prepared, and willing, to be accountable in the organisations and societies we serve?"
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Robert Weissen
Shell UK Ltd
United Kingdom
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