I began my career as an accountant almost 40 years ago, and since then many technological advances have been brought to bear on various aspects of the financial reporting process including the use of accounting software packages and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, computer auditing and electronic audit work papers, the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Accounting Standards Codification, software tools for analyzing financial information and, more recently, various cloud computing applications.
Despite these advances, I question whether technology has had the kind of transformative effects on accounting and financial reporting that it has had on other aspects of business and ...