What accountants in 2011 thought 2025 would look like

In 2011, the final Harry Potter movie came out in theaters, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” was all over the airwaves, and the AICPA released CPA Horizons 2025, the result of a project meant to envision what the accounting profession might look like over the next 15 years.

Now that 2025 is in the rearview mirror, let’s take a look at some of what the AICPA got right—and what it didn’t anticipate—about accounting today.

The more things change…Accountants were concerned about automation in 2011. As the Horizons report notes, “Newer, more powerful and cheaper software allows individuals and businesses to automate activities that once required a CPA’s expertise.” However, in language that could almost be lifted from something written today, it added, “While this may eliminate some CPA services, it also creates opportunities for the profession to shift to more value-added work.” That’s come to pass in certain ways, especially in the growth of client accounting services, which has allowed firms to diversify beyond compliance work, and often generate more value from engagement with existing clients.

The report’s prediction also offers hope that AICPA CEO Mark Koziel is right about AI: that it won’t replace accountants, but instead represents a new advance the profession will be able to adapt to. And by automating some of the more manual parts of accounting, AI could potentially make jobs in the field more rewarding—something that could help it attract new entrants to the field.

Continuing ed. The Horizons report states that accountants need to engage in lifelong learning. That concept’s still very much current in 2025—only we call it upskilling.

The new normal: The Horizons report reflects its era’s interest in globalization, with a section on accounting as a “worldwide profession” and references to how “increasing globalization will require CPAs to obtain more knowledge about the international marketplace.”

Many of the report’s predictions about the globalized nature of accounting have come to pass, such as how it will increase outsourcing, allow for international expansion, and let firms hire from abroad. In fact, trends like these have become so normalized that their global nature isn’t often called out.

But the Horizons report failed to foresee some of the biggest forces to shape the accounting profession in recent years:

AI. The report didn’t foresee AI, though, to be fair, how could it? And it did hedge its bets, observing, in regard to technological changes, that “just as it would have been difficult to imagine all the changes technology would bring between 1998 and 2011, it is equally difficult to pinpoint the changes CPAs can expect between now and 2025.” (We advise anyone writing a predictions article to include similar language.)

The talent crunch. When the Horizons report came out in 2011, undergraduate degrees in accounting had reached their highest level since 2000–01. They’d soon begin to decline. Now, finance departments are facing an accounting shortage. “Finding qualified staff” was the top issue for firms of all sizes, save sole practitioners, in the AICPA’s 2024 PCPS CPA Firm Top Issues Survey, and firms employing 21+ through 5,000+ professionals all named staffing as the top issue they foresaw in the next five years.

The rise of private equity. In just the past few years, the profession has seen a wave of consolidation as firms use private equity money to acquire competitors. Private equity’s impact on the profession has also raised concerns about auditor independence, as regulators like SEC Chair Paul Atkins, SEC Chief Accountant Kurt Hohl, and PCAOB Acting Chair George Botic have mentioned.

Looking ahead. The AICPA has recently announced another “visioning project,” led by futurist Daniel Burrus and nicknamed “Rise2040.” Preliminary results suggest that CPAs view AI as transformational and are concerned about attracting more young people to accounting, but still hold an optimistic view of their profession. It remains to be seen whether these sentiments stand the test of time.