AI is becoming embedded in everyday professional work, but it is also exposing a widening gap between expectations and reality that organizations must now address
Key insights:
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AI is creating a growing “value gap” — A new report shows that while adoption is widespread, most professionals feel AI isn’t delivering the expected benefits, leading to frustration and additional client pressures.
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This gap is driving real business risks — Organizations are seeing growing risks from this value gap, such as shadow AI use, lack of alignment with company strategy, and even potential talent loss as professionals consider leaving if AI value falls short.
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Success depends on deliberate, well-executed strategy — Organizations need more than just more AI tools, the report shows, noting they must close the gap between strategy and day‑to‑day practice, often through structured change management.
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As AI adoption becomes more widespread in professional services — more embedded in professional workflows, offered services, and client expectations — it’s actually compounding the kind of challenges that service professionals can no longer ignore.
Indeed, these challenges have moved past the traditional worries of accuracy and security to include the more subtle ways AI is changing how professionals perceive their workplace and their ability to succeed, and it’s even seeping into areas like retention, professional development, and client expectations.
The latest iteration of the Thomson Reuters “Future of Professionals” report takes a deep dive into the ways fiduciary professionals in the legal, tax, audit, accounting, compliance, risk, and global trade areas, are managing these changes, as well as how they’re navigating the pathways their organizations are following.
The 2026 report, distilled from a survey of more than 1,800 professionals across 62 countries, shows that AI adoption, unsurprisingly, is becoming widespread — with 74% of respondents saying they use AI tools several times a week and 44% saying they rely on those tools multiple times a day.
AI-bred challenges appear in new places
As AI adoption spreads and reshapes how professionals work, learn, and interact with clients, it can be a tremendous opportunity for organizations, as long as the human aspect of AI is brought along in tandem.
“AI is a powerful force multiplier, but the judgment, relationships and accountability remain human, and that won’t change,” says Steve Hasker, President and CEO of Thomson Reuters.
For more on Thomson Reuters’ “Future of Professionals 2026” report, listen to our latest Clarity podcast here
For example, while 78% of clients say AI-enabled quality improvements are essential, only 6% say they are consistently receiving them, and that can damage a client relationship. Further, this disconnect ramps up the pressure on those fiduciary professionals delivering these services, leading many to move beyond where their organization may be technology-wise.
In fact, the report shows that more than one-third of professionals surveyed admit they use AI tools that their organization hasn’t sanctioned or in ways it can’t see, simply because they are frustrated by the quality of sanctioned tools or the lack of a clear AI strategy. This frustration — often seen as a gap in what they perceive the value of AI to be and what is actually being delivered — is widespread, with 91% of professionals saying they have felt it to some degree.
Worse yet, this frustration can manifest itself in other ways that can damage firms caught unawares. For example, the report shows that almost 3-in-10 mid-career professionals would change jobs within the next two years if AI fails to deliver the value they expect. This level of exodus could cause a cascading effect as experienced professionals take support staff, operational AI capability, and hard-won industry experience with them when they leave.
At an estimated $232,000 per replacement, this is significant potential liability on the horizon for many organizations, the report notes.
Imagining your professional future
Where fiduciary professionals and service firms go from here depends on the choices firms and corporate departments make about AI, the report states, offering three possible futures that have been drawn from how professionals are describing the current paths their organizations are on.
These three potential futures are based on how organizations choose to apply AI — from enhancing current work to fully reimagining it. And while each path has its advantages and challenges, the common thread through each is that whichever path is chosen, that choice needs to be made deliberately and with a strong commitment. Because better outcomes won’t come from arriving at a path by default — or by ignoring the human element.
Yet, as the report makes clear, no matter which path an organization chooses, it has a difficult road ahead, simply because AI strategy does not easily translate into AI practice. Indeed, almost one-third of professionals whose firm or department has a stated AI strategy say that strategy is not visible on a day-to-day basis; and 18% say their organization has no strategic direction on AI at all.
That means, roughly half of today’s fiduciary professionals are working in an environment in which a stated AI strategy either doesn’t exist or doesn’t match the reality of how their work is actually getting done.
Closing that gap and moving forward
Today, closing this strategy-execution gap is an organizational challenge that needs much more than new AI tools or stated policies — it demands structured change management that will allow organizational readiness to keep pace with evolving expectations around AI.
The most useful starting point, the report suggests, may not be whether your organization has an AI strategy in place, but whether the conditions for making such a strategy work are actually in place. Because as the report makes clear, professionals can tolerate imperfect strategies, but they cannot accept a gap between what is promised and what is delivered.
You can explore the full Thomson Reuters “Future of Professionals 2026” report here
