Live demos of bank synoptics, meeting briefings and connected systems, plus the risk dial, security settings and governance every firm needs first.
AI has gone from chatbot to coworker in just four years, and accounting is one of the professions it will disrupt most. In this field report, recorded at the Small Practitioners’ Forum in Banff in October 2026, Clayton Achen shares what his firm learned while leading its own AI initiative. He’s the managing partner of a 25-person virtual CPA firm, and he speaks as a working CPA, not a tech vendor. The session is built around five questions every firm owner should be asking. What happens when data grinding costs nothing? Who in your firm is already using AI without telling you? How fast is this moving? What will clients pay you for in three years? And how do you give your best people safe access to these tools?
The session starts with the state of AI and the real cost of doing nothing. Shadow AI is already inside most firms, so banning the tools doesn’t remove the risk, it just hides it. From there, the speaker explains why his firm dropped ChatGPT and Copilot in favour of Claude, with Blue J for tax research. He shows how a short, clear prompt beats a long rambling one, and how AI-written spreadsheet scripts can remove hours of manual work. Video demonstrations show an AI agent preparing a 670-transaction bank synoptic in about twelve minutes.
Security gets a full, practical treatment from a firm owner’s point of view. It starts with the basics, like backups, password managers, company logins and MFA. Then comes the “risk dial,” which runs from simple chat with no client data up to agents that act on their own. You’ll also learn the three ingredients that make AI agents dangerous, why only business plans belong anywhere near client data, how data residency and Canadian rules differ from most US advice, and how to set connector permissions so reads ask first while writes and deletes are blocked. A live example pulls information from email, Teams, SharePoint, QuickBooks Online, a practice-management tool and engagement software into a one-page client meeting briefing, which then becomes a reusable skill the whole team can use.
The final part looks ahead at the new firm model. The traditional staffing pyramid is breaking, and firms must choose between racing to the bottom on price or holding the price and raising the value. People need retooling rather than replacing. The speaker also covers how firms can build their own apps and run their own sandboxed AI for sensitive work like document intake. The session ends on what stays valuable as the work gets cheaper: human connection, judgment and the professional who signs the return.
1 activity • 1 videos • duration: 1h 30m
The CPA Small Practitioners’ Forum was created to offer an inviting, semi-causal, and easygoing professional development weekend that provides substantial professional development value to small practitioners. All profit earned by the CPA Small Practitioners’ Forum is donated to the Alberta CPA Education Foundation, so you are helping young people in Canada get scholarships for university. All these courses are reviewed by the delegates at the Forum in Banff annually so we have a great lineup that is adjusted every year to keep things relevant to small practitioners. If you work at a public accounting firm in Canada with employees of 1-50 people, you are our target demographic and you should find this course useful.
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