The Accounting Disruptors

What does building a better future look like for the next generation? Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, connect their reflections on the election with a broader conversation about affordability, opportunity, and leadership. They discuss the pressures facing young professionals, why employment numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and the responsibility employers have to create meaningful pathways forward. A weekend spent clearing leaves also offers a practical analogy for AI in accounting: better tools can make work easier and create capacity to tackle more of what still needs doing. The conversation closes with reflections on academic pressure, youth sports, and helping young people find their own path.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

Is accounting still a good career in the age of AI? Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, explore why they believe the profession’s future holds more opportunity than many young professionals realize. They discuss the uncertainty facing students and recent graduates, the growing demands on accountants, and how AI could help professionals move beyond basic reporting into analysis, judgment, and leadership. They also share practical advice on building technology skills, finding employers that invest in development, and using relationships and initiative to open doors. It’s a candid conversation about accounting’s changing role and how the next generation can prepare for it.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, explore what basketball’s three-point revolution can teach accounting leaders about AI transformation. They examine how the ERP became the center of the CFO’s office, why adding AI tools without changing workflows can limit their impact, and what businesses need beyond closed books. They also discuss the evolving role of the CFO, employees’ fears about changing responsibilities, and the opportunity to create more capacity for overburdened tax professionals. It’s an honest conversation about rethinking the accounting playbook, turning better information into better decisions, and helping people adapt as the work changes.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, return from San Francisco Tech Week with a clearer picture of how AI is being put to work in accounting. They explore practical applications in accounts receivable, the risks of employees building agents in isolation, and why reliable results require shared business context, secure data access, and human oversight. Drawing on lessons from a CFO panel including an agent that exposed employee salary information, they discuss why AI workflows need review, approval, and ongoing testing. It’s an honest conversation about moving beyond experimentation and building an accounting department where AI’s work can be trusted, shared, and audited. 

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, explore why using AI isn't the same as transforming an accounting firm. They discuss uneven adoption across the profession, private equity's influence, and the tension between immediate results and meaningful changes to how work gets done. Drawing on Wiss's own experience (including a doubling of monthly AI token costs), they examine why time savings don't automatically translate into lower costs or greater value. It's an honest conversation about defining what AI should accomplish, delivering better information to clients, and helping employees answer an increasingly personal question: "What's my job now?"

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses. 

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, explore how AI is rewriting the psychological contract between professionals and their organizations. They examine research showing that AI can increase efficiency while also creating more work, expanding responsibilities, and raising expectations. The conversation explores how expertise, recognition, belonging, and security shape people’s relationships with their employers; how COVID and remote work disrupted traditional measures of commitment; and why specialized knowledge may become less valuable as AI makes information more accessible. They also discuss the need for clearer leadership communication and what EY’s dramatic audit quality gains reveal about combining technology with workflow redesign and talent development.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, explore why the rapid adoption of AI can feel like a grieving process for accountants and organizations. They talk candidly about fears of losing competence, control, professional identity, and job security, as well as the difficult reality that implementing AI often creates more work before it saves time. It’s an honest conversation about the gap between AI’s promised future and its current capabilities, the loss of community within accounting, and why leaders must acknowledge the human impact of disruption while helping their people move from fear to confidence.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately held and venture-backed businesses.

On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, step away from AI and accounting to reflect on where they were that morning and how the day reshaped their views on leadership and workplace culture. They talk candidly about the organizational divide it exposed at the time, the human need for connection during crisis, and why they believe the accounting profession has drifted away from treating people with humanity. It's a personal, unfiltered conversation about grief, resilience, and what leaders owe the people who work for them.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately-held and venture-backed businesses.

Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri, hosts of The Accounting Disruptors, unpack why most firms adopting AI right now are adding cost without changing anything about how the work actually gets done, using a real internal example: a Claude bill that jumps between $600 and $2,600 a month per individual. Paul and Matt also share how Wiss Labs solved a real operational problem inside its own investment portfolio management process, and what that experience revealed about what CFOs are actually paying for when they bring in AI tools: trust, not time savings. This episode covers CFO cost structure, accounting ecosystem history, ERP adoption, and why accounting as an industry remains significantly underpriced.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately-held and venture-backed businesses.

Only 10% of businesses are using AI for real, agentic work, even though 85% of accounting teams call it a strategic priority. On this episode of The Accounting Disruptors, hosts Paul Peterson and Matt Barbieri unpack the newest AI adoption data from RAMP and FloQast to explain why chat subscriptions don't equal transformation. They break down what companies are actually spending on AI per employee, why fully self-driving cars sitting unused in driveways are the best analogy for accounting's resistance to change, and why the "capacity paradox" (accountants too buried in manual work to learn the tools that would free them from it) is the real barrier to adoption. They also cover the trust gap around AI-generated financial data, why data cleanliness matters more than the model itself, and what CFOs and controllers should actually be asking before they roll out AI.

The Accounting Disruptors is produced by Wiss, an AI-optimized CPA and advisory firm serving privately-held and venture-backed businesses.