25 Aug Is Your CPA Keeping Up? Five Questions to Ask About How They Use AI

If you haven’t asked your CPA about their AI strategy yet, now’s the time. A growing number of accounting firms, including small practices with fewer than 10 employees, are using AI tools to speed up tax research, automate bookkeeping, and free up time for higher-value advisory work.

For business owners, that shift matters. A CPA who has thoughtfully adopted AI can often turn around complex analyses faster, catch things a rushed manual process might miss, and spend more of their time actually thinking about your situation instead of just pushing paper.

But not every firm is approaching AI the same way, and not every use of AI is equally safe or effective. A CPA firm without an AI strategy risks falling behind on efficiency and insight. A firm using AI carelessly can also risk your precious data.

The difference often comes down to a handful of practical questions. Here are five worth asking at your next check-in with your CPA:

1. Where in your practice are you actually using AI today? Vague answers (“oh, we use some AI tools”) aren’t especially useful. Good answers are specific: like AI-assisted research for complex tax scenarios, automated transaction coding and reconciliations, AI-built client intake or workflow tools, or AI-assisted drafting of summaries and reports. The goal isn’t to interrogate your CPA’s tech “stack.” It’s to understand whether AI adoption is intentional and tied to real outcomes, rather than a buzzword.

2. How do you protect our data when you use these tools? This is the most important question on the list. Ask whether client information is ever entered into public, consumer-grade AI tools, or whether your CPA uses enterprise-level platforms with stronger data protections and no model training on your information. Firms serious about AI have clear boundaries here. For example, using AI to build internal workflows and automations rather than to process sensitive client data directly.

3. Who reviews AI output before it reaches me? AI-assisted research and drafting can be a genuine time-saver, but it should never be the last step. Your CPA should be able to describe how professional judgment, verification and sign-off are built into their process. AI is a starting point for analysis, not a replacement for the person putting their license behind it.

4. Has AI changed how quickly you can turn around complex requests? This is where you should start to see real value. Firms that have adopted AI thoughtfully report meaningfully faster turnaround on research-heavy work like tax planning scenarios, structuring questions, and multi-entity analysis because the time-consuming groundwork happens faster, leaving more room for strategic discussion. If your CPA can’t point to any efficiency gains after adopting these tools, it may be worth asking what’s holding them back.

5. What has AI freed you up to do for me that you couldn’t before? This question gets at the real payoff. The best use of AI in an accounting practice isn’t cutting costs. It’s creating capacity for the advisory conversations that actually move the needle. These should include proactive tax strategy, scenario planning, more frequent check-ins, and clearer explanations of your numbers. If your CPA’s answer is “more time to dig into your specific situation,” that’s a good sign.

The bottom line: AI is quickly becoming table stakes in the accounting profession, but how a firm uses it, and how carefully it protects your information along the way, varies widely. A short conversation with your CPA about these five questions can tell you a lot about whether you’re getting the full benefit of where the profession is inevitably headed.

For a deeper look at how small CPA firms are putting AI to work in their day-to-day practices, see the Journal of Accountancy’s recent feature: Real-life ways small firms use AI.