Putting the AI in Audit
How the technology is transforming the audit profession
AI is a hot topic now and for good reason: everyone wants to innovate
The audit profession is no different, so how can the industry better use cutting edge tech to its advantage?
Technology, including AI, has already transformed the profession over the years. For example, document intelligence and parsing (which means extracting relevant text from documents to accelerate analysis) can help make short work of a repetitive task.
And when it comes to evaluating risk, AI can also be used to make predictions, based on historical and other relevant data that professionals can then explore further to prove or disprove.
Now, with the explosion of opportunities presented by Generative AI (“GenAI”), Deloitte is looking at how we can use it to build on existing practices, or create new ones, that offer benefits for the entities we audit and our people.
The introduction of ‘PairD’, our own GenAI tool, is enabling us to trial new approaches in a safe environment and continue to shape the profession of the future.
The big question: how can we bring together the best of human intelligence and machine learning to tackle audit challenges in a safe, responsible, and ethical way?
Data is the cornerstone of AI. And analysing large amounts of data is what gives auditors insight into a company’s financial performance and operations.
Given the profession hinges on data, the introduction of GenAI means there are exciting times ahead, with lots of opportunity to further enhance the quality of how we work and to make audits even more robust.
Building on our experience with AI, and drawing on the firm’s Trustworthy AI approach, we’ve identified three of the biggest opportunities of embracing GenAI which we’re spending lots of time exploring to make sure we’re at the forefront of tech-driven Audit & Assurance (A&A) practice.
1. Adding value by spending time on what matters
We’re exploring more sophisticated ways to add value. Using PairD, our people can rapidly obtain insights and analysis and ask it specific questions. It allows them to analyse, summarise, explain, and translate confidential data within its secure digital ecosystem.
Automating large portions of manual data entry saves time, allowing our people to focus on more value-added and often more interesting tasks, giving practitioners more time to evaluate potential risks.
2. People + AI = new capabilities
However professional and expert, our people are not data robots!
Which is a good thing, because applying their judgment to patterns and anomalies identified by GenAI will only enhance the insights we can bring. It doesn’t replace the need for professional judgement, but rather accelerates and deepens the analysis to inform it.
3. Developing new solutions and embedding in our audit platforms to support
PairD is only the beginning, with plans well advanced to deploy a number of new GenAI tools through our award-winning global audit platforms.
Our platforms already include technology to recognise auditable numbers in draft financial statements, automatically recalculate them, and suggest internal cross-references, and there are a number of other use cases under development that we expect to launch in the next 12 months.
Embedding new GenAI solutions into our current platforms will help uncover deeper insights for entities we audit, consolidating and co-ordinating our knowledge and efforts.
“Putting people at the heart of our plans for GenAI is key to maximising the opportunity ahead of us.”
Simon Stephens, Partner, Audit & Assurance
“I feel excited to be riding this wave of innovation at the firm. These GenAI capabilities will allow our team to harness more sophisticated data analysis, and by combining these insights with our professional expertise, it will be able to inform more effective and efficient decision-making.”
Gabriela Rodriguez Elesgaray, Associate Director in Algo & AI Assurance
Making AI work for people
Those who work in audit know that it’s a lot more than data entry.
But, like any job, there are important administrative tasks that underpin a successful audit. Automating some of them opens the way for more junior staff to engage in more complex, judgmental work earlier in their careers, possibly even accelerating their development.
In that way, GenAI has the potential to contribute to a more exciting and attractive experience for people considering the profession, which can help keep bringing great talent into the industry.
“To coincide with the rollout of PairD, we asked our people for ideas on how the technology could be used to enhance the delivery of audit and assurance engagements, and we were overwhelmed by responses. I channelled my inner-dragon sitting on the panel for our ‘Dragons Den’ style event where we heard directly from our teams on how they want to see Deloitte embrace GenAI. Not only was this a good way to embrace the technology and innovate, but a great way to engage our people,” says Simon Stephens, our GenAI executive sponsor in A&A.
The event led to lots of new ideas that are now being investigated further in terms of feasibility and quality - they included areas such as anomaly detection, report writing and contract assessments.
Lewis Fleming, an A&A associate based in Glasgow, one of our AI champions, says: “This has been a fantastic opportunity for tech savvy adopters of AI - who are often more junior - to grow their networks and make impactful contributions. For me, the source of excitement lies in the opportunity to pioneer the way we will complete tasks in the future!”
Trust and transparency
As we work to develop our practices, it’s important to remember that the purpose is not for GenAI to replace, or to serve as a substitute for, auditor judgment and professional scepticism, but to enhance.
GenAI is a powerful tool that could enhance the audit process, but it is not without its risks, so remaining cautious is vital. A&A is all about critical thinking, so looking out for potential bias in algorithms, hallucinations (an output that is nonsensical or false) goes hand in hand with learning and developing.
Embracing and benefitting from the potential of GenAI – for practitioners and companies – depends on the industry’s ability to advance in a way that’s responsible and ethical. The integrity of our practice and data, and managing risks associated with GenAI, will always be at the heart of the new tools, solutions and platforms we deploy.
“There are big leaps that GenAI could help the profession to take,” concludes Simon.
“The speed at which it is changing how we work makes it hard to reliably predict exactly what the future might look like, but the core concepts around governance, risk, and controls still stand as the foundations for trust and transparency.”
