ACCA urges businesses to cautiously embrace AI

Accountants play a pivotal role in guiding organisations to leverage AI for achieving sustainability goals while also highlighting its potential environmental drawbacks, such as increased emissions and water consumption, ACCA has said.

The leading global accountancy body has released the latest in its AI Monitor series, Unravelling AI’s role in sustainability, which highlights that embracing AI effectively requires education and a cultural mind shift. 

The research says that embracing this set of technologies could help in the fight to meet present needs without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs. AI solutions are increasingly seen as critical in helping organisations measure and report their environmental impact. 

Alistair Brisbourne, head of Technology Research at ACCA, said: “It is clear AI holds tremendous potential, but without due consideration AI technologies can also threaten progress towards achieving sustainability goals.”

This is where accountants can add vital strategic value. As ACCA’s research entitled ‘Chief Value Officer – the important evolution of the CFO’ pointed out, as organisations increasingly integrate analysis and AI into their processes, it is the human analysis and validation of the outputs that create the insights which stimulate value generation. 

Brisbourne said: “Organisations need to focus on getting people to think about AI as something that is learning from them, encouraging people to input and maintain data that will provide more value. At the heart of these challenges lies the fundamental issue of data quality and standardisation. Accountants need to lead in the establishment of good data practices to ensure benefits are realised.” 

AI could be used to accelerate progress on achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Innovative solutions are needed with only 17% of SDG targets on track for 2030 and another 35% showing signs of stagnation or regression. 

In particular, technology could play a supporting role in sustainability reporting with AI overcoming one key challenge – converting financial data into meaningful environmental metrics. However, the challenge of data quality is not solved purely using AI. 

Brisbourne added: “In terms of sustainability reporting, accountants have a critical role in making sense of transaction data to underpin and improve reporting. 

“They need to ensure high-quality data input that AI systems can effectively interpret and learn over time, dealing with exceptions and verifying data. From an assurance angle, they can also support improved validation of estimates and monitoring of models running such exercises.”