Twelve years in audit. Most of it shouldn't have been manual.

I spent more than twelve years in audit. Most of the hours weren't spent on judgment — they were spent on work that shouldn't have been manual in the first place. Rolled-forward workpapers no one really updated. Hardcoded numbers where formulas should have been. Endless document matching across systems. That's not audit. That's process inefficiency.

If I'd had today's AI back then, I'd have cut a large chunk of that workload. And here's what's frustrating: a lot of it doesn't require "advanced AI" at all. It's pattern matching. Comparison. Exception flagging. We already have tools that handle this.

The gap isn't technology. It's execution.

Too many teams are waiting for firm-wide tools, perfect models, or top-down transformation. Meanwhile the easiest wins are sitting in plain sight. Start with the work you already know is a waste of time: cross-checking documents, tracking changes across versions, scanning for inconsistencies. Free up time for the parts of audit that actually require thinking.

AI won't change audit standards anytime soon. It changes how the work gets done.