With automation being increasingly adopted within the accountancy profession, there are, understandably, concerns about whether some areas of expertise might be lost as technology begins to assume a bigger role.

Consider taxation, for instance, where historically, people have built experience and knowledge by devoting many hours to data entry and analysis; what happens when those hours are all done by machines?

While automating processes such as these obviously has some important operational and efficiency benefits, how can accountancy practices and departments train somebody to be a tax specialist if they use automation to cut out the basics?