Agenda

The accounting profession is being reshaped by technological acceleration, shifting regulatory expectations, and a generational transition in the workforce. This opening session examines what it now means to be a trusted advisor in a world where clients expect transparency, responsiveness, and ethical clarity.

Drawing on emerging expectations from younger practitioners and evolving public standards of conduct, we'll explore how identity, professionalism, and culture are changing, and why firms must adapt if they want to remain credible and competitive.

Key learning outcomes:

• A clear understanding of how ethics and professional identity are evolving.
• Insight into changing client and workforce expectations.
• Practical steps for strengthening trust, transparency, and culture inside your practice.

With tax integrity measures tightening, anti-avoidance rules strengthening, and regulatory scrutiny increasing, accounting practices face a more complex compliance landscape. This session offers a deep dive into the emerging posture of the TPB and ATO, including where enforcement is heading, how high-risk arrangements are being challenged, and what the proposed reforms mean for practice governance.

We will unpack how the regulatory environment is shifting across registration standards, supervision, documentation, and risk management, giving firms a practical roadmap for aligning internal processes before sanctions or bans escalate.

Key learning outcomes:

• How tax integrity and anti-avoidance priorities are evolving.
• The TPB's direction on regulation, discipline, and practice obligations.
• How to identify and mitigate high-exposure client arrangements.
• Governance and documentation frameworks that reduce risk across the firm.

With structural reforms now in motion, including Payday Super legislation, superannuation has entered a new phase of regulatory complexity.

This session provides a clear, compliance-focused breakdown of what has changed, what is imminent, and where practices must elevate their systems. We'll translate the regulatory shifts into concrete operational impacts for practitioners and clients.

Key learning outcomes:

• How recent and upcoming reforms reshape compliance obligations.
• The real-world impact of Payday Super implementation.

With the expanded AML/CTF regime approaching, firms offering designated services must be ready to meet new standards in onboarding, monitoring, reporting, and record keeping. This session breaks down both the rules and the operational reality of compliance at scale.

We will examine how firms can classify services in scope, structure risk assessments, design sustainable CDD workflows, and prepare for increased scrutiny over governance and record management. A practical readiness roadmap will help you map resourcing and cost structures ahead of time.

Key learning outcomes:

• How to identify which services fall within the updated AML/CTF regime.
• Designing and operationalising CDD, risk tiers, and ongoing monitoring.
• Documentation and record-keeping frameworks for audit resilience.

Digital transformation in accounting rarely fails because of technology. It fails because firms underestimate the cultural, process, and capability shifts required to sustain it. This session moves past vendor language to expose what genuinely drives embedded, durable transformation.

Through practical frameworks and examples, we'll examine how to redesign workflows, build change-capable teams, and execute implementation without overwhelming staff or fragmenting service delivery.

Key learning outcomes:

• A robust framework for managing change across people, process, and platforms
• Approaches for defining and measuring transformation outcomes beyond ROI.
• Strategies to overcome implementation fatigue and secure team alignment.
• Tools to ensure new systems translate into real efficiency and client value.

The surge in automation and generative AI is accelerating a reallocation of work across the profession, creating efficiency, uncovering deeper analytical insights, and reshaping service lines. But these gains come with licensing, governance, training, and cost considerations that must be weighed carefully.

This closing session provides a grounded, balanced view of how to adopt AI without compromising integrity or risk settings. We'll explore where human judgment remains irreplaceable, how to evaluate defensible investment, and how firms can begin shifting capacity from compliance to advisory in a sustainable, strategically aligned way.

Key learning outcomes:

• How to assess AI investments across fixed and variable cost profiles.
• Protecting human judgment in automated workflows.
• Rebalancing teams toward higher-value advisory work.
• Structuring adoption strategies that manage risk and preserve trust.