Earn Free CPE: The Future of Accounting Is Human

Karl Paadam made partner at PwC Estonia at 26. Then he left to spend a decade in tech. Now he's back, building a firm on a thesis that sounds backwards at first: the future of accounting is human.

Here's what he means. AI is going to eat the mechanical work — the bookkeeping, the categorization, the reconciliation. That's not a threat, it's the point. Once the mechanical work is gone, what's left is the stuff that's always been the real product: trust, judgment, and relationships.

The firm he's building, United Accountants, runs on an AI operating system that layers on top of whatever software a firm already uses. No rip-and-replace. CPAs keep their own local brand and hand off the grunt work to the machine.

Karl and I dug into all of it in episode 115 of the Earmark Podcast. And now you can earn free CPE credit just for listening.

Register here: https://earmark.app/c/3507

What else is in this episode

• The "first big small firm": Karl's model for scaling a practice without turning it into a faceless national brand.

• Outcomes-based pricing: Why the billable hour makes less and less sense once AI is doing the mechanical work, and what should replace it.

• The pyramid problem: What happens to a firm's structure when the junior tasks that fed the bottom of the pyramid get automated away.

• Who actually gets replaced: It's not the accountant who uses AI. It's the one who pretends it isn't coming.

How to earn free CPE

Listen to the episode, take a short quiz in the Earmark app, and claim your credit. That's it — free CPE for the time you'd spend learning anyway.

Register here: https://earmark.app/c/3507