For months, artificial intelligence was blamed for making it harder for recent college graduates to land entry-level jobs. Then the Federal Reserve Bank of New York introduced a different explanation. Its latest analysis suggests remote work, not AI, explains the 64% increase in unemployment among recent college graduates, arguing that employers have become reluctant to hire inexperienced workers into remote-capable roles because they fear those employees will miss mentorship and on-the-job learning. It’s an important finding, but perhaps the wrong conclusion is being drawn from it.
For accounting firms already battling an aging workforce, succession concerns, and a shrinking talent pipeline, blaming remote work risks overlooking a much larger problem. The profession is not suffering from a flexibility crisis. It is confronting a development crisis. Remote work did not eliminate mentorship. It exposed how heavily many firms relied on informal apprenticeship models built around physical proximity instead of intentional knowledge transfer.
The mentorship myth
Accounting has always been an apprenticeship profession. Junior accountants learned by sitting beside senior staff, overhearing client conversations, watching partners navigate complex tax issues, and asking quick questions throughout the day. Those moments certainly had value, but they were never a formal learning strategy. They were simply a byproduct of sharing the same office.
When firms shifted to remote and hybrid work, those informal interactions naturally became less frequent. Instead of redesigning how mentorship happens, many organizations concluded that mentorship itself requires an office. That assumption deserves to be challenged.
The New York Fed’s research may have identified a symptom. It has not necessarily identified the disease. The problem is not that young professionals cannot learn remotely. The problem is that many organizations never built structured systems to teach them in the first place.
This distinction matters because accounting cannot afford to lose another generation of professionals. Industry estimates suggest nearly 75% of CPAs are at or approaching retirement age while demand for accounting expertise continues to grow. At the same time, undergraduate enrollment, master’s degree completion, and CPA exam participation have all declined over the past several years. The profession is already struggling to attract young talent. Reducing workplace flexibility could shrink that pipeline even further.
Accounting has a development problem
The accounting profession often frames remote work as a threat to collaboration, culture, and technical development. Yet those challenges existed long before anyone worked from home. Many young professionals have spent years describing inconsistent onboarding, limited coaching, unclear career progression, and managers who were too busy to mentor them, even while sitting in the same building.
The office often disguised weak management systems because proximity filled the gaps. Questions could be answered quickly. Processes could be explained on the fly. Knowledge lived inside experienced professionals rather than inside documented systems. When work became distributed, those invisible dependencies became impossible to ignore.
Meanwhile, the profession itself continues to evolve. Thomson Reuters reports that 68% of tax and accounting professionals are optimistic about generative AI, and firms increasingly expect junior professionals to work alongside intelligent technologies rather than perform repetitive manual tasks. As automation assumes more routine work, the skills young accountants must develop are becoming more strategic. Critical thinking, judgment, communication, and advisory capabilities cannot simply be observed from across a cubicle. They require intentional coaching.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report reinforces this reality. As experienced professionals retire and AI reshapes work, organizations increasingly depend on structured knowledge sharing, coaching, and continuous learning. The competitive advantage no longer belongs to firms with the smartest people. It belongs to firms that can consistently transfer expertise from one generation to the next.
Build a modern apprenticeship, not a better commute
The firms preparing for the next decade are not trying to recreate yesterday’s office. They are redesigning how knowledge moves through the organization. They recognize that mentorship should never depend on whether someone happens to overhear a conversation or sits within walking distance of a partner. It should be engineered into the way the firm operates.
That shift requires leaders to stop treating training as an informal responsibility and start treating it as business infrastructure. Knowledge transfer, documentation, coaching, and feedback should be as standardized as audit procedures or tax workflows. The firms that master this transition will not only develop stronger accountants but also create more resilient organizations capable of growing despite ongoing talent shortages.
- Stop relying on tribal knowledge: For decades, accounting firms have depended on institutional knowledge living inside experienced professionals. Partners retire, managers leave, and years of expertise often walk out the door with them. That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Instead, firms should build living knowledge systems that make expertise accessible to everyone. Standard operating procedures, recorded walkthroughs, searchable documentation, decision frameworks, and collaborative knowledge bases reduce dependency on any single individual. They also allow junior professionals to learn continuously instead of waiting for someone to become available.
- Turn feedback into a business process: Young accountants rarely leave because they dislike hard work. More often, they leave because they do not know whether they are succeeding, how to improve, or where their careers are headed. Feedback should not be reserved for annual reviews or busy season evaluations. The strongest firms create regular coaching conversations, project debriefs, peer reviews, and clear development milestones. Frequent, specific feedback accelerates confidence, improves technical judgment, and strengthens retention regardless of where employees perform their work.
- Redefine mentorship for an AI profession: AI is changing accounting, but it is not replacing accountants. It is changing what accountants need to know. As automation assumes more routine work, younger professionals must develop stronger analytical thinking, client communication, professional skepticism, and strategic advisory skills earlier in their careers. That evolution makes mentorship more valuable than ever. The role of experienced professionals is shifting from teaching repetitive tasks to developing judgment. AI can accelerate calculations. It cannot teach professional intuition, ethical reasoning, or how to navigate difficult client conversation. Those capabilities are still transferred from people to people.
The firms that invest in learning will lead the profession
It is understandable why some leaders view return-to-office mandates as the simplest solution to developing young professionals. Physical proximity feels familiar because it reflects how many leaders built their own careers. But familiarity should not be mistaken for effectiveness. The accounting profession is confronting multiple challenges simultaneously: an aging workforce, declining enrollment, increasing technological disruption, and rising client expectations. None of those problems will be solved by asking employees to spend more time at a desk. They will be solved by building organizations where learning happens deliberately, consistently, and continuously.
The mentorship conversation should never have been about remote work versus office work. It should have been about whether firms are creating environments where knowledge is intentionally shared, future leaders are actively developed, and every new professional has a clear path to growth. The firms that embrace that responsibility will not simply overcome today’s talent shortage. They will define what the next generation of accounting leadership looks like.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line—and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion. She operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Karla Jo has patterned her agency on the perfect balance of crisis management, entrepreneurial insight, and proven public relations experience. She speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception. More information is available at www.jotopr.com/.
Photo credit: Chris Montgomery/Unsplash
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