What's Next: Focusing on Human in the Lead

Rise2040 explores the human capabilities that will define the future of finance and accounting. Discover the findings and learn how AICPA & CIMA are uniquely positioned to help professionals develop the skills needed to succeed in the year 2040 and beyond.

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The capabilities that matter most in 2040 are distinctly human.

The Critical Capabilities for 2040

The data is clear: the defining capabilities of 2040 are not technical, they are human.

The value of the finance and accounting professional shifts decisively toward judgment, insight, and influence. Participants in Rise2040 say the future will not be led by those who simply adopt technology, but by those who can apply it with discernment, translate it into meaning, and lead others through complexity with clarity and trust.

The transformation to 2040 is not just a technology evolution. It is a human one.

Four ESSENTIAL key capability categories

Human Capabilities

The skills AI can't replicate.

Insight & Judgment Capabilities

Turning data into decisions.

Leadership Capabilities

Leading people through change.

Technical & AI Fluency Capabilities

Partnering effectively with technology.

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Capability Areas:

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Anticipatory Organization: Finance & Accounting
Capability Areas:

✓Leadership
✓Insight & Judgement

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Human Capabilities

These are the capabilities that AI cannot replicate and are a sustainable competitive advantage.

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  • Communication (vs. informing): Moving from one-way, static report delivery to two-way, dynamic dialogue that creates movement 
  • Storytelling: Translating complex information and data into compelling narratives that drive action  
  • Collaboration (vs. cooperating): Shifting from transactional obligations to co-creative partnerships 
  • Trust building: Actively maintaining and elevating the profession’s foundational asset rather than passively assuming it (both with clients and within teams) 
  • Emotional intelligence: Understanding and responding to human context, nuance, and unspoken needs 
  • Strategic listening: The ability to understand, through deep attention, what clients and stakeholders need, even when it has not been explicitly articulated, by interpreting context, emotion, and underlying intent
  • Communication (vs. informing): Moving from one-way, static report delivery to two-way, dynamic dialogue that creates movement 
  • Storytelling: Translating complex information and data into compelling narratives that drive action  
  • Collaboration (vs. cooperating): Shifting from transactional obligations to co-creative partnerships 
  • Trust building: Actively maintaining and elevating the profession’s foundational asset rather than passively assuming it (both with clients and within teams) 
  • Emotional intelligence: Understanding and responding to human context, nuance, and unspoken needs 
  • Strategic listening: The ability to understand, through deep attention, what clients and stakeholders need, even when it has not been explicitly articulated, by interpreting context, emotion, and underlying intent

Insight & Judgment Capabilities

These are the capabilities that increase value across the profession.

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  • Critical thinking: The essential human filter for AI-generated outputs, enabling professionals to question assumptions and challenge data rather than merely processing it 
  • Ethical reasoning: Navigating the complex moral questions created by AI and automation to ensure the profession remains worthy of public trust 
  • Strategic advisory and consulting: Moving upstream from recording what happened to prescribing what should happen 
  • Anticipatory mindset: Identifying Hard Trends and using them to seize opportunities and pre-solve problems before they become crises 
  • Systems thinking: Seeing interconnections and anticipating the ripple effects of decisions across a complex organization

Leadership Capabilities: Driving Transformation, Not Just Change

These capabilities directly affect whether the profession merely changes or truly transforms.

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  • Transformation leadership: Fundamentally rethinking roles, services, and value creation and casting a vision that inspires change 
  • Innovation: Applying systematic frameworks to create genuinely new value, moving beyond imitating best practices 
  • Learning agility: Being comfortable with continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning in a world of perpetual technological revolution

Technical & AI Fluency Capabilities: The Foundation for an AI-Augmented Environment

Mastery is not about competing with AI’s speed but about fluently partnering with its capabilities.

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  • AI literacy: Working effectively with intelligent systems as a collaborative partner. Polling showed the majority of professionals remain in the “explorer” stage 
  • Data analytics: Working with complex datasets to generate predictive insights and ensure data quality 
  • Technological fluency: Understanding, broadly, the current technology stack in enterprises as well as emerging technologies and related considerations including blockchain, the internet of things (IoT), and cybersecurity 
  • Foundational accounting and finance: Retaining a deep understanding of core accounting and finance principles — including audit, tax, and financial reporting — remains critical, even as AI performs much of the underlying work. Professionals must be able to interpret outputs, validate accuracy, apply standards in context, and exercise judgment in complex or ambiguous situations. Technical knowledge is not replaced, but it is repositioned as the foundation for oversight, accountability, and trust

The future belongs to professionals who can hold complexity, make sound judgments when answers are not obvious, and lead with both confidence and integrity.

Technology will continue to advance. Data will continue to expand. But the profession’s relevance will be determined by something far more enduring: the ability of its people to think critically, act ethically, and lead decisively. This is Human in the Lead, and it is the profession’s most powerful and irreplaceable advantage.