Working with dinosaurs

Published in Accounting Technician

Some say evolving technology threatens to make accountants extinct. Can they adapt to the changing climate or are they doomed? Sally Percy sinks her teeth in

What’s the difference between a dinosaur and an accountant?

If you ask that question of Anthony Hilton, the respected financial editor of the London Evening Standard, he would probably tell you that one is extinct, while the other isn’t. Yet.

In an engaging and provocative keynote speech to AAT’s FMAAT Premium members earlier this year, Hilton compared the prospects of accountants with those of the ‘terrible lizards’ that were wiped out 65 million years ago.

Technology, Hilton said, was increasingly enabling businesses to have real-time information on which to base decisions, e ectively removing much of the technical work that accountants have done up until now. “The environment is no longer in need of your skills, the way it was,” he noted. “So you are going to have to evolve or, otherwise, like the dinosaurs, you will disappear.”

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