By Donal Laverty, Consulting Partner
The debate around AI in professional services is too often framed as a technology challenge. In reality, it is a people and skills challenge.
AI is here. The frameworks are being built, the tools are available, and adoption is accelerating. Yet many firms remain focused on the technology itself rather than the behaviours and capabilities required to make it transformative. Resistance is rarely about the software, but more often rooted in attitudes, culture, and a reluctance to change established ways of working.
The firms making real progress are not the ones who are just buying AI tools. They are rethinking how work is delivered and investing in AI in the same way they invest in talent and headcount. Technology alone does not create competitive advantage when everyone has access to the same tools. The differentiator remains the knowledge, judgement, and expertise that firms bring to their clients.
The professional services sector has long been built on expertise protected by professional barriers and specialist knowledge, but AI has begun to blur those distinctions. The traditional model of advisory work is being challenged. The very idea that expertise alone is enough to sustain value has been called into question.
Clients will increasingly expect AI-enabled efficiency as a baseline, meaning that the value proposition is shifting. What they will continue to pay for is interpretation, analysis, judgement, and strategic insight. The most valuable advisers of the future will not simply be repositories of knowledge; they will be the professionals who can apply experience, challenge assumptions, and help clients navigate complexity.
This is particularly evident in accountancy. AI can already perform many routine tasks with impressive capability, but it is not infallible. If AI currently delivers around 70 per cent accuracy, a trainee accountant might achieve 79 per cent, a manager 88 per cent, and a director 99 per cent. The gap is not simply knowledge; it is professional judgement, context, and experience.
The profession is therefore not facing a single disruptive event but an ongoing evolution. Just as computers evolved from machines the size of tables into indispensable business tools, AI represents the next stage in that journey. The question of whether or not professional services firms incorporate AI has been and gone; the defining question is now how they choose to incorporate it.
The firms that become truly AI-proof will not be those that resist change, but those that critically reassess their services, embed AI into their operating model, and redefine where human expertise creates value. Success will come from understanding what can be ceded to AI and what must remain fundamentally human.
In the future, clients will not come to professional services firms simply for information. They will come for analysis, insight, judgement, and expertise. Those qualities remain uniquely valuable, and uniquely human.
This article first appeared in The Irish News on 9th June 2026.