Accounting is often associated with structure, numbers, and technical expertise. But as technology changes the profession, the skills that matter most may extend far beyond traditional accounting.
In a recent conversation with Mariano Álvarez Bor, Karli-Rose McIntyre shared how her career has evolved from traditional accounting into a unique combination of education, technology, creativity, and human connection.
Her journey offers an interesting perspective on where the profession may be heading: one where AI handles more of the repetitive work while accountants have more opportunities to develop the distinctly human skills technology cannot replace.
Karli-Rose didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming an accountant. She knew she wanted to study business, and when her stepfather suggested accounting because it could offer a stable career, she decided to give it a try. What started as a practical choice eventually became a foundation she would value much more than she expected.
Working with nonprofits throughout her accounting career also changed the way she saw the profession. Many of the people she worked with were deeply invested in their organizations and their missions, but accounting was often the last thing they wanted to focus on. Karli-Rose found that one of the most valuable things she could do was translate what she and her team saw in the financials into information clients could actually understand and use to make better decisions.
That combination of technical knowledge, communication, and teaching became an important part of her career. Looking back, she sees the accounting skills she developed in school and during her internships not as something that limited her to a traditional path, but as a foundation that gave her more options later on.
A major shift came several years into her career.
After experiencing significant personal changes and working weeks that could reach 80 hours, Karli-Rose began questioning whether constantly performing at work was how she wanted to spend her life.
Eventually, she left her job and took a six-month sabbatical.
The time away gave her an opportunity to reconsider her priorities and reconnect with interests that had existed alongside accounting for years, particularly music.
For Karli-Rose, the experience wasn’t about abandoning accounting. Instead, it changed her perspective on what a sustainable career could look like and how different parts of her identity could coexist within it.
That realization eventually led her to start bringing something unexpected into the accounting world.
During her time away from work, Karli-Rose began exploring sound and music as tools for relaxation and restoration.
Having experienced burnout herself, she started thinking about whether those same tools could help other accounting professionals dealing with pressure and stress.
Over time, those two seemingly separate worlds began coming together.
Recently, she had the opportunity to facilitate a relaxing sound bath at an accounting conference, a meditative experience using sound that would traditionally seem far removed from the technical environment of the profession.
For Karli-Rose, the response demonstrated something important: accounting professionals can be open to new ways of learning, thinking, and managing the demands of their careers.
Today, she continues combining these ideas with her professional work as a content manager for a national firm supporting nonprofits with accounting and advisory services.
Her role allows her to help accounting professionals learn the skills they need in an environment increasingly shaped by automation, AI, and constant digital distraction.
Karli-Rose uses AI every day and has already seen how dramatically it can change the amount of time required to complete certain tasks.
She sees applications across virtually every level of an organization, from professionals handling everyday accounting work to leaders thinking about strategy and the future of their firms.
But she also believes AI needs something technology alone cannot provide: human oversight.
AI-generated work still needs to be reviewed, questioned, and placed into context.
And as technology becomes more capable, Karli-Rose believes several human-centered skills will become even more valuable:
Empathy.
Critical thinking.
Emotional intelligence.
Listening.
Communication.
Rather than viewing AI and human capabilities as competing forces, her perspective is that technology can make those human qualities even more important.
The question may no longer be simply what can AI do? It may also be: what should people become better at when technology can do more of the technical work?
When Karli-Rose thinks about the next several years, she doesn’t pretend to know exactly how AI will reshape accounting.
Instead, she sees an opportunity to remain open to what becomes possible.
Her hope is that technology creates more space for professionals to move between the technical and creative sides of their work.
For accountants experiencing burnout or the pressures of the profession, that could also mean becoming more open to tools centered around restoration, listening, presence, and well-being.
Karli-Rose hopes to continue working at that intersection, bridging the technical foundation of accounting with the creative and human-centered practices that helped reshape her own career.
It’s an unconventional combination, but perhaps that’s exactly the point.
As accounting evolves, successful careers may become less about fitting into a traditional definition of what an accountant should look like and more about finding new ways to use the foundation the profession provides.
Karli-Rose’s story shows how much an accounting career can evolve over time. What started as a practical choice became a foundation she could build on, even as her interests and priorities changed.
Today, technology is creating another opportunity to rethink what that career can look like. As AI takes on more tasks and changes how accounting work gets done, professionals may have more room to focus on the parts of the job that depend on people: listening, communicating, thinking critically, building relationships, and helping others understand complex information.
For Karli-Rose, that also means making room for creativity and bringing music into a profession where it might not traditionally belong. Her path doesn’t suggest there’s one new way to be an accountant. Instead, it shows that a strong technical foundation can lead in many different directions.
As accounting continues to change, that flexibility may become one of the profession’s greatest strengths.
