AICPA Provides Guidance on Use of AI & Digital Assets

Welcome to the Genuine Learning Blog! Today, I want to highlight two AICPA resources that may be useful in your work: a new practice aid addressing artificial intelligence considerations for financial statement auditors and an updated practice aid covering accounting for and auditing digital assets. If your firm or your clients are working in either of these areas, these resources deserve a look.

Let’s start with AI. We know artificial intelligence is reshaping business processes, financial reporting, and the audit itself. That creates questions about how organizations use these tools and how auditors consider that use in their engagements. The AICPA’s new AI practice aid, issued in October, approaches those questions from two perspectives: the client’s use of AI and the audit firm’s own use of AI.

The first part focuses on understanding how an organization uses AI and what risks that use may create. Is your client using AI to draft financial statement disclosures? Is it helping determine journal entries? Where does the information feeding those tools come from? These are questions we need to consider as we develop our understanding of the organization and assess risk.

Knowing that a client “uses AI” is only a starting point. We need to understand how that technology fits into the client’s processes and how it may affect financial reporting. This practice aid provides a resource for thinking through those considerations.

The second part turns to the audit firm’s use of AI-related technological resources. Are you using AI to assist with risk assessment? Are you using it in work involving disclosures or other aspects of an engagement? Just as we need to understand what our clients are doing, we also need to consider how we use these tools in our own work. The practice aid brings both perspectives together in a relatively short resource that I encourage you to review.

The second resource is the Accounting for and Auditing of Digital Assets practice aid, updated on August 31, 2026. This publication provides nonauthoritative guidance addressing both accounting and auditing considerations for digital assets.

The latest update reflects changes related to SAS No. 146 and quality management, includes content on stablecoins and mining revenue, and updates auditing considerations related to the existence of digital assets and the associated rights and obligations. If you audit clients with digital assets, or work in an organization that holds them, these are areas worth paying attention to.

One helpful feature of this resource is that it continues to evolve. The AICPA has separate accounting and auditing working groups developing content as new issues arise. As accounting standards change and additional audit considerations emerge, the practice aid is updated. That makes it a resource to revisit periodically.

For those of you following my dissertation journey, cryptocurrency is the subject of the case study used in my experiment, so this topic is especially interesting to me. With the FASB also looking at issues involving stablecoins and other cryptocurrency matters, there will be more developments to follow.

My takeaway this week is simple: know what resources are available and use them when they apply to your work. Whether you are considering your client’s use of AI, your firm’s use of AI, or the accounting and auditing implications of digital assets, these AICPA practice aids can help you work through the questions these evolving areas raise.

Thank you for joining me on the Genuine Learning Blog. I look forward to seeing you on a future blog!