Accounting Insights

Joel Strong

5.0 (1)
Business
Updated Weekly

A weekly podcast exploring accounting, accounting profession, and accounting education and how, what and why of AI use in the accounting profession and accounting education with an emphasis on the tools used suggesting both tools for accounting professionals and accounting students to improve their workflows

13h ago

Prompting Practices: Teaching and Using AI Prompts for Accounting Workflows

This episode gives accounting professionals and educators a practical, reproducible approach to prompt engineering tailored to accounting workflows. The panel (hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith plus two guests—a firm technologist and an accounting educator) defines core prompt patterns for reconciliation, account analysis, financial statement explanations, and client communications, then shows how to structure templates that preserve professional judgment and auditability. Listeners will get concrete validation methods, simple rubric-based grading for classrooms, and a short live refinement demo that turns a weak prompt into a robust, explainable chain of prompts. The goal is to help listeners reduce information overload, increase repeatability, and teach students prompts as a disciplined skill layered on accounting fundamentals rather than a shortcut that replaces judgment.

8 min
Jun 1

AI-Assisted Audit Sampling: Teaching Smart Selection, Controls, and Classroom Labs

This 15-minute panel brings accounting educators and audit practitioners together to demystify AI-assisted audit sampling and make it classroom-ready. Hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith guide listeners through the fundamentals of statistical and judgmental sampling, practical AI techniques that improve sample selection and risk stratification, and concrete classroom labs and assessment designs that help students learn both technical and professional judgment skills. The episode focuses on tools and reproducible workflows—sampling modules, lightweight Python/R scripts, and AI assistants for pattern detection—paired with governance steps and checklists to ensure auditability and compliance. Educators will leave with ready-to-run lab ideas, assessment rubrics, and sample prompts; practitioners will get practical controls and tool recommendations that reduce information overload while preserving professional skepticism. The tone is practical and professional, emphasizing how to teach verification, documentability, and ethical use of AI in sampling.

8 min
May 4

Month-End with a Co-Pilot: A Live AI-Assisted Close Walkthrough for Firms and Classrooms

This episode delivers a tightly focused, practical session that models a month-end close with AI assistance for both practitioners and educators. Sarah and Brad lead a panel that runs a step-by-step walkthrough—reconciling accounts, flagging anomalies, drafting adjusting entries, and producing explanatory notes—while pausing to highlight control points, explainability checks, and educator hooks. Listeners get concrete prompts, tool recommendations for small firms and classrooms, and a ready-to-use classroom lab plus an assessment rubric to measure judgment and verification skills. The format balances a realistic workflow demonstration with teaching strategies so accountants can adopt safe AI practices and instructors can convert the case into graded exercises that emphasize professional skepticism.

8 min
Apr 27

The AI Red Team: Stress-Testing Accounting AI and Teaching Failure Modes

This episode teaches accountants and accounting educators how to ‘red team’ AI tools used in accounting workflows so they can find real-world failure modes before those failures reach clients or students. Hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith guide a panel of practitioners and instructors through replicable adversarial tests — from data poisoning and prompt-jailbreak scenarios to edge-case financials and biased training data — and translate findings into practical controls, logging practices, and classroom exercises. Listeners will leave with a lightweight red-team checklist they can apply to vendor tools, in-house models, or classroom assignments, plus strategies to turn discovered failures into teaching moments that strengthen professional skepticism and auditability. The focus is pragmatic: low-cost experiments, reproducible steps for educators, and controls that preserve human oversight without blocking useful automation.

8 min
Apr 20

AI Toolkits for Solo Accountants and Students: Practical Productivity Playbooks

Solo accountants and accounting students face the same two problems: too much information and too few hours. This panel episode breaks down practical, realistic AI toolkits and workflows that listeners can adopt in a single workweek. Hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith guide a focused discussion on three applied areas: 1) personal productivity and client-facing templates (email, engagement letters, time tracking), 2) study and learning workflows for accounting students (note synthesis, exam prep, problem sets), and 3) secure, ethical integration patterns that preserve professional judgment and compliance. Each segment includes specific tool categories, one-copyable prompt style or macro, and a quick checklist for safe use. The episode is designed for immediate piloting — listeners will finish with a small, prioritized action list they can start using right away.

6 min
Apr 13

AI-Powered Client Communications for Accountants

Accountants increasingly rely on AI to scale client communications, yet few teams and classrooms have clear playbooks for safe, effective use. This panel episode gives practitioners and educators a practical framework for adopting AI-driven client messaging: common use cases, quality controls, compliance checkpoints, and classroom exercises that teach students to craft, review, and audit automated communications. Hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith convene experienced firm leaders and an accounting instructor to compare vendor features, show prompt and template patterns for engagement letters and client FAQs, and lay out trust-and-verify workflows that keep professional judgment central. Listeners will leave with copyable checklists, sample prompts, and ready-to-run classroom assignments that bridge firm practice and accounting education without sacrificing tone, ethics, or regulatory requirements.

9 min
Apr 6

AI-Augmented Internships: Designing Practicums That Make Students Job-Ready

This panel episode offers a practical playbook for accounting educators and small-firm leaders who want to pilot AI-enhanced internships or practicums without heavy engineering or vendor lock-in. Hosts Sarah Thompson and Brad Smith moderate a focused discussion with an accounting instructor and a firm manager on three actionable areas: creating realistic anonymized client datasets and governance rules; choosing affordable, easy-to-integrate AI tools and ready-made prompt templates to scaffold intern tasks; and designing supervision, assessment rubrics, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints that ensure learning and compliance. Listeners will leave with a semester-ready pilot plan, concrete prompt examples, an anonymization checklist, and evaluation rubrics they can adapt immediately. The episode emphasizes low-friction, ethically sound steps that fit typical academic schedules and small-firm supervision capacity, so programs can produce work-ready graduates and firms can gain useful project support without compromising privacy or learning outcomes.

9 min
Mar 9

Vendor Due Diligence Playbook: A Practical 15‑Minute Audit for Accounting and the Classroom

This 15‑minute episode walks accountants, procurement leads, and educators through a compact, tool‑agnostic vendor due‑diligence playbook anchored by an anonymized case where an unverifiable privacy claim stalled an implementation. Hosts Sarah and Brad moderate three sharply different voices: a procurement director at a mid‑market firm, a K‑12 compliance officer, and an independent privacy auditor. The conversation covers (1) evidence to demand—benchmarks, third‑party attestations, a reproducible‑output test and a model‑provenance snapshot; (2) data handling and classroom‑licensing edge cases; and (3) contract controls, SLAs, and a three‑step one‑week pilot. In a tightly timed demo the hosts pre‑fill a one‑page checklist and highlight three surprise checks that commonly slip through reviews. Listeners leave with a downloadable checklist + redaction template and a guided worksheet to run the one‑week pilot. Practical, non‑technical, and rigorously time‑boxed, the episode equips teams to make defensible vendor decisions fast.

9 min

A weekly podcast exploring accounting, accounting profession, and accounting education and how, what and why of AI use in the accounting profession and accounting education with an emphasis on the tools used suggesting both tools for accounting professionals and accounting students to improve their workflows

Creator

Joel Strong
Years Active

2K
Episodes

15
Rating

Clean
Copyright

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Accounting Insights