I’m hanging out this week at the AICPA’s annual Interchange conference in Dallas. Why “Interchange?” Because it’s all about the free exchange of ideas among employees of state CPA societies nationwide.

Traditionally, the opening keynote at Interchange is given by Barry Melancon, president and CEO of the American Institute of CPAs, and it’s always in the form of a professional issues update — Barry telling us about the trends he’s seeing, how those trends will impact the profession, and what we, as association executives, should be doing about them.

This year, Barry offered this gem. I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this:

Given the exponential pace of change we’re experiencing today, how would we, if given the opportunity, re-invent the audit?

It’s a great question. You get a blank slate and all the knowledge about where technology is and where it’s going. Given all of that, how would you design the audit of tomorrow?

Barry didn’t offer any answers. An AICPA-led consortium is trying to uncover those answers as we speak.

It’s the exercise that intrigued me.

In this day and age, when Moore’s Law continues to usher in an exponential pace of technological change, any reimagining of what the future of our profession will look like must start with the assumption that anything — absolutely anything — will be possible.

How would you reimagine your future if you started with the basic premise that anything would be possible?

Right. You’d reach for the sky.

As we start to reimagine what’s possible, what we can achieve, what’s next, we have to start with the foundational belief that, thanks to Moore’s Law, anything will be possible.

With that as a starting point, the sky’s the limit.

Our next step? Dream on.