Finance teams are preparing to scale agentic artificial intelligence (AI) to augment business performance and plug talent shortages, but many employees in a recent survey are apprehensive that AI tools will move beyond a collaboration role and eventually manage workforces.
Finance professionals expect agentic AI integration to enhance forecasting and budgeting (32%); financial reporting (32%); and fraud detection (30%); and those professionals are pushing to revolutionise the finance function, according to a global survey from Workday, a US software development company.
Momentum is high for finance professionals. Over three-quarters (76%) of respondents working in finance agreed that AI agents will alleviate the shortage of accountants and finance professionals. “While 62% of organisations are already rolling out or are in early production with AI agents and 11% are scaling, this is set to change dramatically,” the report said. “Half of respondents expect to be scaling AI agents within the next three years — a nearly fivefold increase.”
Overall, decision-makers across industries are confident that AI agents can deliver reduced workloads (88%), faster innovation (82%), and financial success (71%). Additionally, the majority of employees (75%) are comfortable collaborating with agentic AI. They trust that their organisation’s use of AI will benefit and upskill them.
Consequently, adoption has increased for 82% of organisations across industries as optimism from leaders and employees drives momentum.
However, as agentic AI integration expands across operations, fears about how it could be used in the future have increased. Employees worry that AI agents could cross ethical lines, impair critical thinking, and erode human connection, the report said. Currently, only 30% of employees are comfortable being managed by AI agents.
The accelerated rate of AI adoption will challenge organisations to figure out how AI tools can empower employees without bleeding into the uniquely human aspects of their work, the report explained.
The report is based on a global survey of 2,950 employees and leaders.
AI unsupervised: Ethical implications
Despite trust in AI as a collaborator, apprehension remains in areas that require human judgement. The top barrier to agentic AI adoption for organisations is ethics and governance concerns (44%). Fear of misuse is common as well: 30% of respondents are very or extremely concerned about AI tools being misused.
Employees’ fears are realistic. Lack of oversight is blurring ethical boundaries, according to Resume Builder’s recent survey of over 1,000 US managers. While only one-third of the managers said they had received formal training on the ethical use of AI in people management, nearly two-thirds said they use AI tools at work. Amongst those, nearly all (94%) use AI tools to make decisions about direct reports.
The majority of those managers have used AI in personnel decisions including raises (78%), promotions (77%), layoffs (66%), and terminations (64%). Despite significant knowledge gaps, more than 20% said they allow AI to make decisions without human input often (16%) or all the time (5%).
Technology adoption is a double-edged sword, according to Jamie Gruman, Ph.D., professor of organisational behaviour at the University of Guelph in Canada. In an interview with FM, Gruman explained that the proliferation of technology is accelerating a cultural disregard for employees.
“The use of AI and robots are trends that, of course, have tremendous advantages, … but it’s this drive for efficiency that leads us to regard other people in terms of how they can promote our own efficiency and results in dehumanisation,” Gruman said. “By creating a culture of care, where employees have a say in how the technology is going to be used, … employees are going to be less resistant to the technology.”
Finance’s role in bridging the trust gap
Transparency is key to building workforce trust, according to the Workday report. Workers are comfortable with AI as a collaborative partner and a self-improvement tool, the report said, but they object to AI taking on the role of a boss, making financial decisions, or operating without transparency.
Only 40% of employees are comfortable with AI making financial decisions. In response, finance leaders are aiming to strike the right balance between innovation and integrity by keeping humans at the forefront of governance, risk, and compliance management.
Workday’s data signals that finance teams’ increased exposure to AI in their roles is improving transparency and trust, as only 12% of finance professionals are resisting AI due to job displacement fears.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
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Articles
“What Agentic AI Will Mean for Finance”, FM magazine, 20 June 2025
“Agentic AI Poised to Change the Way CPAs Work”, Journal of Accountancy, 1 June 2025