Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley record on-site in Las Vegas to debrief a packed week around AICPA ENGAGE 2026 and the annual Thought Leader/40 Under 40 mashup. They open with the Rise 2040 vision project, highlighting mega-trends like the profession’s “great identity shift,” AI as a strategic force multiplier, globalization, and the emerging “trust paradox” created by artificial intelligence.
The hosts describe intense roundtable discussions among young tech-enabled CPAs and seasoned thought leaders on associations, evolving business models, and how state societies must reimagine member engagement in a digital, AI-driven world.
The Accounting Tech Lab is an ongoing series that explores the intersection of public accounting and technology.
The conversation then tackles AI and private equity—“AIPE”—and how late-career partners, unfunded buyouts, and underinvestment in technology are driving firms toward PE ownership and forced modernization. They explore return-to-office realities, cybersecurity and AI-powered threats, including federal actions around advanced AI models, and the profession’s persistent self-confidence gap with technology.
Randy shares ENGAGE highlights, including his 40th year speaking, a standing-room-only Tech Update and AI prompting session, and a 200-vendor exhibit hall featuring every major publisher and cloud platform. They close with reflections on AI’s ubiquity at ENGAGE, main-stage guests like Ryan Reynolds, and why networking at these events still moves the profession forward.
Transcript
(Note: Some errors may appear due to automated transcription.)
SPEAKERS
Randy Johnston, Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the Accounting Technology Lab, brought to you by CPA Practice Advisor, with your host Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley.
Randy Johnston 00:09
Welcome to the Accounting Technology Lab. I’m Randy Johnston, with co-host Brian Tankersley, and you can probably tell we’re in the same room for a change.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:17
It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s wild. It’s like, what, four times a year we get to see each other, and here we are.
Randy Johnston 00:24
Yeah, and it turns out that with event season in full swing, we want to first report to you about the AI CPA Engage conference for this year. We’re particularly interested in the Tech Plus channel, but I want to back up in the story a little bit, because Brian and I were fortunate enough to fly into Las Vegas the night of Saturday, june 6, and met on Sunday, june 7, with the 40 under 40. We got a lot of young CPAs coming up that are technology, I’ll say, focused, might be a way to talk about it, but very much enabled, and then a lot of the other thought leaders, so this mashup experience, there was a nice number of people there. The sponsor on this was Right Works, and Derek Destin, who’s the VP of community for Right Works, was there. Great event, and we had very interesting discussion. So I thought maybe we’d talk about that just a little bit, because in
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 01:21
all fairness, the publication is owned by Right Works, so we’re talking about our overlords, but they have never ever given us any editorial guidance
Randy Johnston 01:29
that would be true. And Isaac O’Banon, who is actually the current editor, ran the event for the first time. He did a nice job, and first up was the preview of something that was announced the next day, the Rise 2040 project. Now, if you think back on visioning work for the AI CPA, they originally had their first vision project, which spanned the years of 1997 through 2011 and then we went on to the 2011 to through 2025 Horizons project, so we basically were kind of out of runway, and this new project is supposed to run from 2026 through 2040 and it was talking about a lot of trends. Long term friend of mine, actually Daniel Burris, who’s a futurist and used to be a science teacher up in Wisconsin, helped with this worldwide visioning project, Daniel really talks about hard trends and soft trends, and that’s how he predicts the future, if you will, and
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 02:30
6000 contributors across 25 countries, they collected data, they did the surveys in, seems like it was what, New York, no, Dallas, and, and Heathrow, so they brought in people from all over the place, and then they also had facilitators that were people in the profession that actually went and handled that other places, so all over the world.
Randy Johnston 02:52
Yeah, and it turns out, you know, the results that were published are very interesting in terms of what the needs are, and we actually had discussion throughout the day about these various topics, and we did a little bit of the same type of brainstorming, which I posted pictures of on LinkedIn, so you might have seen a few pictures there, which were where we broke up into three different groups, and actually, you know, went through a lot of that, but there were several different key items, you know, great identity shift occurring, the future proofing through anticipation and global optimism, all in the agendas, a trust paradox that was occurring, as well as the AI as a strategic force multiplier, and that there was a bit of an artificial wisdom barrier here, but it is real clear that the profession is making a shift, and this document is to try to help drive some of that,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:52
and I will say that I thought it was, I thought it was insightful that they picked up that that the AI creates this trust paradox and creates need for more trust instead of less, which is good because we’re in the trust business. Okay, and so it was. I thought it was, I thought it was a good thing they had an interesting methodology. Tom went a little bit deeper into the technology side than I expected him to, but it, it seems like it seems like this is another change, like it reminds me of when they were doing the pre one of the previous visions, and and they were talking about cloud. It feels like now AI is the new driver that’s changed, and globalization is are the two things changing it, and it’s.. it seems like it seems like, you know, I think the.. you know, let’s just forward to head to the end, okay. Everybody still lives happily ever after in this one, okay. But it’s a, but it’s also one of those things where you know the, it’s kind of like the life, you know, if you don’t, if you don’t adopt the new technology, you’re going to end up where the people that smoke cigarettes with their 10 keys at their desk and have five and seven column paper are right now, which is not a good. Place,
Randy Johnston 05:00
yep. Next topic that we covered was associations. That was an interesting discussion, because it was actually enlightening to me to note how many of the young professionals didn’t actually know all the various associations and the state societies and provincial societies. That it’s not like they were clueless. I don’t want to imply that, but they just didn’t have a very good understanding of how things operated, and that was a bit of a fascinating piece on that of me. Even just trying to differentiate the alliances that are out there, it was fascinating because many in the room who I thought should have known that cold, just didn’t seem to know that. I’m not criticizing him, it was just surprising, I think.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:47
Well, it’s, it’s so hard for the state societies to get, you know, there’s there’s so many people that want to be involved with the states, it’s it’s very difficult for them to make big changes in their business model to accommodate new things, you know. You think about the thing, the changes you and I’ve had to make with CPA, where you know we had to go out, we bought cameras, we bought microphones, we bought, we bought lighting, we’ve got green screens, you know, and and we get on planes about half as much or less than we used to, and that’s okay with me, you know. I don’t like, you know, squeezing a squeezing a five pound bag and a two pound seat, you know. But it’s, it’s still, it’s, it’s, it’s very difficult for them to, you know, they’re having to totally reimagine everything, because since inception they’ve been based on person to person contact, and now with everything going digital and going to AI, it’s a little different,
Randy Johnston 06:46
and you know, then we segue over into what I call the four letter word AIPE, right, because everywhere you turn now it’s AI discussion, often gratuitous AI discussion,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:02
it feels like blockchain was about 10 years ago, you know, when, when blockchain and crypto were gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna make everybody’s teeth whiter and make us all more attractive to members, members of people that we wanted to be attracted to, and you know, it was just, you know, everybody was just gonna be hot and rich, which I was all in the workout,
Randy Johnston 07:20
yeah, and I think you know us well enough that we’re not anti AI or anti PE, but everybody’s talking about it, and there’s still a bit of a frenzy, and I can’t quite put my finger on what’s going on, but I do notice a bit of a frantic response from many, and Brian and I’ve talked about that a little bit, trying to understand why I don’t think it’s a fear factor,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:45
but, but, but you know, you, I think you pointed this out correctly to me yesterday, the day before, you know, it’s, you know, I was thinking back to my experiences when I started taking counting firms paperless in the late 90s, and one of the things that that really resonated, that you said was that there are a lot of people that are ready to retire, and they put it off because of the pandemic, and now they are choosing, choosing to sell out, and because they set their buyouts back in the good old days, they’re unfundable, and so they’re having to go to PE to get the money they want, but then the PE says, okay, fine, we’re going to force technology in here, and you know, again, that’s good. The forcing of the technology is something that’s been needed anyway, because the senior partners at a lot of firms, there’s a.. there seems like there, when you hit that stage in life, you don’t want to change anything, because you’re afraid you’re going to mess up the machine, but the problem is that we end up under investing, and then the talented young people don’t want to come here, because they don’t have the, they don’t have the technology, so it’s a, you know, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been an interesting ride, but there is a lot of uncertainty, and I think some people are stoking it for their benefit to get people to sell that might not otherwise, yeah,
Randy Johnston 09:02
and it could be a bit of a catch 22 also, but you are correct that one of the tipping points I think that is occurring is if you are late career, I think the professionals are looking at and saying, oh, I’ve got to learn all this AI stuff, and oh, I’m not sure I want to change my life to do that. It may change it for the better, but I don’t want to do that bit of learning.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:27
In all fairness, the accounting profession also kind of has a self-confidence problem with respect to technology, because they, you know, it’s it’s not something that people get up and get excited about, and they can’t talk to their neighbors and brag about it, but they can sure talk about, you know, they can sure talk about. I went to St. Thomas, and we spent the gross national product of India flying, you know, riding it, riding a sailboat across the Caribbean together as a family, you know. And it’s, it’s just a different thing, it’s not something they get excited about.
Randy Johnston 09:58
Yeah, so there were two. Other main topics, and one of those was returning to office, and there was a bit of discussion about how that shook out. Few in the room had 100% virtual, most had some sort of a hybrid, and the most common response on that was like the middle three days, the weekend, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, were kind of in office.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 10:20
I talked to Dan Hood from Accounting Today at length today, and he actually said that they’re in the office in New York City four days a week, and you know that’s for a lot of those people that live out in the burbs, that’s a commitment, two hours each way, it is
Randy Johnston 10:35
a big commitment, so we did talk about that and why that part of the culture was August, I’ll say, returning, and then we closed up with a little bit of cybersecurity, and we are concerned with the AI threats against cyber. We’ve talked about that in the episode on Claude Mythos, and there’s many things that have been happening, including the pullback or clawback of fable club. Well, the
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:05
federal government said classified fable under ITAR, the International Trade and Arms Regulations. And so basically they said, okay, if you’re not American, you don’t get, you don’t get fable. And so at that point, Anthropic said, Okay, nobody gets it.
Randy Johnston 11:18
Yep, that’s kind of the way it shook out. So that really led, then, because unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way we should talk about that, Brian wound up, you know, covering other engagements for our k2 business,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:33
and I was so torn by that too, because I’ve been on the committee at Engage for many years, and you know, I’d been there since before, when it was tech plus, and so I’d been there 10 plus years, and you know, I hated to not be there, but at the same time we had good clients that needed service, and they were going to do something without us if we didn’t do it, and we were going to lose them. So I got on airplanes, and it was, it was a good week, but it was, it was exhausting,
Randy Johnston 11:58
and it turns out for me this was my dependent, how you want to count it, 40th year of speaking at ASCPA engaged, you know, the prior tech conference, and so forth. I spoke in 86 not in 87 and all the years since then. Okay,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:14
and I do want to dispel a rumor that’s out there, because there’s a rumor that you’re retiring, okay, and it’s my understanding that the rumors of your demise are greatly exaggerated.
Randy Johnston 12:25
I would say that’s true. You know, I’ve told you several times I want to see AI running on quantum computers, and we know quantum is not going to arrive here in 2026 but there’s some promising technology in 27 but you know, if it happens 27 I don’t think I’m going to stop then either, so I did get the privilege of watching Wesley Hartman and Chris Ortega run a workshop on using Claude for Claude Code and some other things. They did a nice job, and that was an interesting piece, but then that led over to the afternoon opening keynotes, and they ran a town hall from the MGM Theater, and Sue Coffey, and Lisa Simpson, and Eric Askerson, and Mark Kozio were all there, as well as the new cheer, Jan Lewis, and beautifully done town hall. I actually picked up a lot of pictures, and you know, Brian and I have talked about some of the content there, and that was all good, but then from there it became even more of an unfolding, really a well done piece, but it didn’t take long. We were out of that and into meetings with top level executives from the big publishers, and it was kind of back to back to back for me with the exhibit hall and everything else
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 13:45
talk to me about the about the speaker reception that they do every year, what I affectionately, I used to refer to it as the Barry and Eric show, and now it’s the, it’s the, it’s, yeah, it’s it’s the AI CPA chair and Eric Askerson from cpa.com and you know, Mark, the Mark and Eric show,
Randy Johnston 14:06
yeah. And it turns out there were, as you have seen in the past, many influential people in the room. Again, the speakers are invited, a lot of the new accelerator groups in there, most of
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:19
the consultants to the profession.
Randy Johnston 14:20
Yes, so it was a broad range, and the topics covered there were good, and realizing we’d just had the town hall, so heard a lot of that type of information. This was a little more of an intimate discussion, which was good and very solid. And you know, I hate to say it, I don’t drink on those type of events when I’m going to speak, but we closed the place down, so you know we stayed there till the last, the people were shooing us out and saying we got to close this room up.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:49
I really, I really regret missing that meeting in particular, because it’s, it’s some of the best networking I get done again every year, you know, I had a about. Four years ago I had a friend that was had a daughter that was getting ready to make manager at EY, and she was having a hard time getting her application through NASBA, and I talked to Sue Coffey over, over, over dinner, and I said, this is not a slacker doing this, this is this is somebody for real, and it got handled, you know, it’s there’s there are things like that that you can get done in rooms like that that are that are amazing.
Randy Johnston 15:28
Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. So it turns out then, you know, I wound up with Tech Update on that Tuesday morning, and one of my instructors out of k2 came in with a Shadani, he’s really brilliant, and so we tag teamed tech update, and it was a pleasure watching do a copilot agent demonstration, and you could just see the eyes light up across the room, because many people didn’t know that a copilot you could have access to Claude or Open AI, and you know, integration with the Microsoft suite, and so forth, and I think, and
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 16:02
still have the indemnification, and still have the have have all that proprietary data not used to train at all,
Randy Johnston 16:10
and it turns out that you, I was watching, because he was demonstrating, and the eyes were going like big wide, and it’s like these people have not seen this before, because they’ve been on this path of Chad CPT or Claude, and they just don’t, aren’t really thinking about it in this new way, that was really a blessing, standing room only in that room, and I did appreciate that, but you know, spent the afternoon really on the show floor, and we will talk about these exhibitors in other sessions, but that show had approximately 200 vendors on the show floor, and I tried to spend enough time, Brian, that I talked really to every one there. I think I might have missed one vendor where they just seemed to always be gone when I was there.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 16:55
But in all fairness, though, they, there are a lot of vendors there that are, that are like PFP vendors and tools for family office and other things, so it’s a, it’s, it’s not an apples to apples comparison with where we are scaling new heights, it’s a, it’s a bigger conference, but it’s a different mix that makes any sense, that
Randy Johnston 17:16
is true, and it was interesting to see how all of the vendors were lined up, because all the bigs were there, Walters Kluwer and Thompson Reuters, and Intuit, and zero. I mean, I can just keep going, because every big vendor that you would be interested in was on the floor, including new vendors like Instead, and you know, all of the 1040 work paper products. I mean, it was, it was really an interesting thing to be able to walk through that well, you know, the next day I was lucky enough to do an AI prompting course in the big room, and it was standing room only for about 900 people, probably something like that, but it was one of those, like, boy, that really felt good when we were done, but it’s not so much talking about me. All these different sessions were, you know, a pretty big deal this year to get done, and there were, you know, lots of different tracks, obviously, as you just identified, at least nine different areas represented on that, and you know, many speakers, and so forth. Reported attendance here was around 6000 people total, and I thought it was interesting in the thought leader, you know, Mark and Eric shows you referred to, they stated we’ve got 6000 but their goal is to try to make that show 10,000 people. Well,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 18:35
you’ve already got what the National Tax and the NAT, the NATs National Accounting and Auditing Technical Seminar, and the PFP folks, and the, you know, there’s, there’s so many massive advanced estate planning, you know, you’ve got so many mass, you know, and controllers, and and then you had the traditional practitioners, which now has incorporated tech, and you know, the story, I think, is we’re talking about the tech, but it’s, it’s wild to me how the tech is de-emphasized, and yet it’s the story,
Randy Johnston 19:08
and it lives everywhere, and if you want to use, you know, the AI word again, AI was pretty much everywhere, so overall other guests from Main stage, were you know, pretty impressive. Ryan Reynolds was one of the guests, along with the now retired CFO of Costco. That guy was brilliant. I mean, I, I’ve talked to a lot of industry CPAs. That guy was just like, wow, no wonder Costco was successful, because all you know, he was part of that culture, but you know, very stunning good things there. So, again, I don’t want to take away from any of the things there, but overall a good thought leader event and a good AI CPA engage. I thought it was a good use of my time, and you know. Glad that you could be there for a little bit, but for the moment, you know that’s kind of a bit of a summary. We don’t often do what I call news shows, if you would. This one will feel like that, and we’ve got another couple similar here, simply because it is conference season. So, I think with that being said, we probably ought to call it a wrap. Well,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 20:20
Viva Las Vegas, indeed, indeed. So we appreciate you listening in, and we’ll speak with you again very soon in another accounting technology lab. Good day. Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the Technology Lab from CPA Practice Advisor. Have a great week.
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