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Professor David Wood at Brigham Young University (BYU) has some of his students design bots as part of the final. And they aren’t computer science students or engineering or math students. They’re graduate accounting students in his data & analytics (D&A) class.

Why would accounting students need to learn about bots? And why do they need to know about D&A?

Meeting with BYU

I had the honor of presenting to David Wood and fellow BYU Professor Jeff Wilks on emerging technologies and how these technologies are going to continue to impact the audit profession. We talked about how technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) are opening up opportunities to make the audit process more efficient and more accurate – and how it will free up time for audit practitioners to focus more on tasks that require judgement. David shared with me later that the presentation tipped the scales in terms of increasing his focus on RPA. After our meeting, he dropped one module of his class to build an RPA module instead. All of his students got certified in RPA and spent the semester building bots. Wow!

At the meeting, we also discussed D&A. Our increasingly data-rich world often dictates that accounting professionals be savvy about D&A, plus have the critical thinking skills needed to translate data patterns and anomalies into relevant and meaningful business insights. We talked about one of the ways KPMG has addressed this, which is by working with some of the country's leading business schools to create the Master of Accounting in Data and Analytics Program. We discussed how this type of education helps students prepare to enter the accounting profession since it provides opportunities for them to use the latest analytics technology in the real world. After our meeting, Jeff Wilks had accounting students in his financial reporting class use D&A to grab millions of sales and returns transactions, put them in a form they could visualize and understand, and then use it to test for relationships.

Changing attitudes

Bots and D&A are just a couple of examples of how technology is changing the field of audit. Because new and emerging technologies continue to evolve at a rapid pace, altering the way the world does business, a number of universities are becoming more flexible with making changes to their curricula to help better prepare students. Jeff explained to me that the timing of my presentation coincided with a growing understanding among BYU accounting professors that emerging technologies are already having a profound impact on the audit profession in tangible ways. Many of these professors are also taking a strong interest in learning how to use these technologies.

Stronger connections between academia and business

More and more accounting professors – such as David and Jeff – are focusing on the importance of being connected to the audit profession. Jeff shared with me that for him, an essential piece of this is doing research that addresses problems accountants are dealing with in the real world and adjusting the scope of research if it doesn’t match up with what professionals are seeing. David and Jeff also consult with multiple accounting professionals on what they should be teaching and indicated that they have received great guidance on topics they wouldn’t have thought of on their own. David explained that professionals have been very helpful guiding him on how to assist students with becoming ready for the market.

BYU is just one great example of a university that is evolving along with the audit profession. It’s exciting to see that schools and their faculty are more eager than ever to work with businesses to help prepare future generations of accountants.

How is your business working with universities to prepare students? Or how is your school working with businesses to do the same thing?

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 This article represents the views of the author(s) only, and does not necessarily represent the views or professional advice of KPMG LLP.