There has been a persistent narrative that suggests artificial intelligence will eventually render the professional service class, think accountants, attorneys, and other structural business advisors, obsolete.
The anecdotal evidence that I’m seeing at Alpine Mar suggests the exact opposite. As AI reduces the cost of production, it exponentially increases the value of judgment. We are seeing a structural shift where the demand for high-level financial oversight is not just growing, but it is migrating up-market.
The Talent Void in Mid-Market Enterprises
For decades, $100 million + enterprises have maintained bloated internal finance and accounting departments. Today, those departments are hollow. There is a measurable shortage of accounting talent, driven by a decade + of “boring” work being undervalued and under-incentivized. This issue has been widely reported over the last decade. In 2022, the WSJ released this article, where a public company CFO shared:
“We have the people, but I don’t think the people we have are necessarily the people that are the most qualified.”
Many organizations have compounded this error by refusing to market these roles at competitive rates, betting on a “technological salvation” that hasn’t arrived. They view accounting as a commodity to be automated rather than a pillar of capital preservation. And when an enterprise lacks the internal human capital to manage its ledger, it doesn’t just face an efficiency problem; it faces a durability crisis.
The Automation Paradox
“Why pay a premium for functions that AI can do for free?”
This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of leverage. AI is an excellent tool for computation, but it is a catastrophic failure at accountability. Strip away the “grunt work” of the accounting cycle. This removes some friction, but it does not remove the need for a pilot. In fact, the more automated a system becomes, the more devastating a single error becomes.
The Logic of the Stakeholder
The “Human Element” is often dismissed as a sentimental variable. In a boardroom, it is a practical one. For instance:
A computer has no skin in the game. It cannot be fired, it cannot be sued, and it feels no reputational sting.
Every stakeholder, from the IRS to lead creditors, require a throat to choke. They demand a human signature that represents a commitment of professional ego and livelihood.
If a process can be done by anyone with a $20/month subscription, that process ceases to be a competitive advantage. It becomes a baseline. The value is no longer in the “doing.” The value is in the “guaranteeing.”
The Durable Path
The firms that will dominate the next decade are those that view AI as a way to scale responsibility, not just output. This inherently gives boring old professional service firms an opportunity to change perception, and perhaps will create a whole new category/industry.
There is a lot of capital chasing professional service firms to “integrate” them in some kind of marketable roll up. It seems pretty clear the strategy is to own the change management, but what is being discounted at scale is the difficulty of deploying change. The fundamental habit of trading hours for dollars and learning the art of trading Certainty for Margin.
As Munger would say,
“Identify a variable that matters, and then push it to the extreme.”
The most obvious variable to me is accountability.