Grunt Work Is Dead | It's Not Just the Numbers
Description
...And accounting careers are better for it.
It's Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines
For decades, accounting careers followed a familiar script: grind through repetitive work, earn your stripes, and maybe—eventually—get to the interesting stuff.
That script is officially broken.
In this episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, hosts Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead tackled one of the most misunderstood shifts in the profession: how artificial intelligence and outsourcing are reshaping early-career accounting work—and why that’s actually good news for graduates and firm leaders.
MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers"
The big question isn’t whether AI and outsourcing are here to stay. They are. The real question is whether firms will use them to strip away opportunity—or to finally fix a broken talent model.
Let’s be honest: repetitive data entry, reconciliations, and manual cleanup were never great learning tools. They were time-consuming, error-prone, and often disconnected from how firms actually create value.
Yet for years, they were treated as a rite of passage.



