A FloQast study published last year found that while the vast majority of accounting and finance leaders say AI is a strategic priority, only a fraction have meaningfully embedded it into day-to-day workflows. The gap between intent and action is striking. And from where I sit – talking to finance professionals and practice partners across Ireland every week – it maps almost exactly onto what I hear on the ground here in 2026.
Everyone is talking about AI. Fewer people are actually using it in ways that change how their team works.
That is not a criticism. It is worth understanding why the gap exists, because the reasons are more practical than philosophical – and most of them are fixable.
The Ambition Is Genuine
Irish accountancy practices and finance functions are not sceptical about AI. If anything, the conversations have shifted in the past 18 months from “should we be looking at this?” to “we know we need to move – we just haven’t yet.” Partners at mid-tier practices are watching their larger competitors pilot AI-assisted audit tools. CFOs in commercial businesses are hearing about FP&A platforms with built-in forecasting automation. The awareness is real. So is the pressure.
What tends to stall progress is not resistance from leadership. It is a combination of things that rarely get named directly: uncertainty about where to start, a lack of internal capability to evaluate tools properly, and a genuine fear of disrupting workflows that are already stretched.
That last one matters more than it sounds. When your team is already running at capacity – which is the reality in most Irish finance functions right now – asking them to also learn and implement new technology at the same time is asking a lot. The risk of implementation fatigue is not hypothetical.
The Talent Dimension Nobody Talks About Enough
Here is where recruitment intersects with this in a way that does not always get discussed openly.
The AI execution gap in Irish accountancy is partly a technology problem. But it is also a talent problem. Firms that are successfully moving from ambition to action tend to have at least one person internally – sometimes a recently qualified accountant, sometimes a financial controller who came from a more tech-forward environment – who can bridge the gap between what a tool promises and what it can actually do for that specific team.
That person is rarely the most senior one in the room. They are often two or three years post-qualification, digitally fluent, and comfortable questioning established processes. And right now, they are in high demand.
When I speak to practice candidates who are weighing up a move to industry, one of the things that genuinely attracts them to commercial roles is the sense that their employer is moving forward rather than standing still. Firms that can honestly say “we’re actively building something here – and we want you involved in that” have a real advantage in attracting that profile. It is a more compelling offer than a salary uplift alone.
What Closing the Gap Actually Looks Like
The FloQast research points to something that practitioners here echo: the firms making real progress are not necessarily the ones with the biggest technology budgets. They are the ones that started with a specific problem – month-end consolidation taking too long, variance analysis eating up a senior person’s time – and found a tool that addressed it, rather than implementing a platform and then trying to find uses for it.
That sounds obvious. In practice, it requires someone with enough technical accounting knowledge to define the problem clearly, and enough curiosity about technology to evaluate whether a solution actually fits. That combination is not as common as vendors would like you to believe.
It also requires firms to create space – actual calendar space – for experimentation. Accountants are trained to be precise and risk-averse. Those are strengths. But they can make it harder to adopt a “test and learn” mindset where early imperfection is acceptable. Building psychological permission for that is a leadership responsibility, not a technology one.
The Risk of Waiting
One thing I will say plainly: the AI execution gap will not close itself. And the cost of staying in the ambition phase for too long is not just competitive – it is becoming a recruitment issue too.
Finance professionals who are building real AI capability are starting to favour employers who are doing the same. Not because they want to work with flashy tools, but because they understand that the technical skills they are developing now have a shelf life if they are not kept current. Joining a firm that is actively evolving its processes is, for many of them, part of how they protect their own career trajectory.
That is a new kind of pressure on employers. And it is one that will only intensify through the rest of 2026 and into next year.
If you are a hiring manager or a practice partner thinking about this, the question worth sitting with is not “are we investing in AI?” It is “do the people we most want to hire believe we are?”
