As businesses look to navigate ongoing change, including stormy economic seas and geopolitical pressures, they’re leaning harder on their tax and finance functions to help drive strategy and craft value.

To fulfill that growing responsibility, finance leaders are shifting the way they think about the hiring, training and retention of top talent: according to a recent survey of finance and tax executives released Nov. 19 by Big Four firm Ernst & Young, 89% of respondents are looking to upskill their existing workforce over the next two years. That requires a “fusion” of not just core accounting or financial skills — although those are still critical — but of technological and data chops as well, Stuart Lang, global tax and finance operate leader for EY told CFO Dive.

“How do we actually put our training program in place to not replace but upskill, recognizing that the skills of tomorrow are different from the skills of the past?” Lang said in an interview alongside his colleague David Helmer, partner, global managed services, EYEA LLC.

Finding the intangible

Finance leaders are seeking to upskill their teams at a time when those teams are expected to provide key insights into planned deals, supply chain changes or scenario planning: a capability 79% of respondents identified as a top priority over the next two years, EY’s 2025 Tax and Finance Operations survey found. The survey was conducted between July and September and fielded responses from 1,600 tax and finance executives, including CFOs and heads of tax.

“Companies are continuing to look at, how do I become more strategic?” Helmer said. “How can I get my team to spend at least as twice as much time on high value strategic activities and reduce the time [spent on] routine compliance activities?”

CFOs are also faced with providing strategic clarity at a time when businesses are continuing to face challenges related to ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical change, Helmer said. For instance, EY’s survey found 81% of companies plan to make changs to their supply chain processes based on geopolitical changes — shifts that will impact tax results, and the tax function in turn, he said.

Those changes are combining with a continued “widening of the talent gap with not as many accountants entering the industry that’s putting a strain on the function,” Helmer said. Tax leaders expect both growing retirement and a winnowing pool of graduates to affect their functions; 61% of leaders, for example, said the retirement of senior tax professionals will “significantly impact” them.

In such an environment, technical skills are still extremely important, Helmer said, but more and more companies are looking to complement those skills.  

Finance leaders are beginning to look toward more “intangible” skills in examining future hires, with 81% of respondents stating they are hiring individuals with proficiencies “other than tax technical skills,” EY’s report found. Problem-solving and critical thinking skills were cited by 85% of respondents as the most essential to develop for future tax professionals.

Additionally, as AI continues to seep further into businesses and as companies look for new skills, “we see companies looking to hire more diverse capabilities within the tax and finance functions,” Helmer said. Many are looking to data scientist or AI specialists to “strengthen that team with people that can work side by side” with traditional accountants or tax professionals, he said.

Shaking off the data rust

Finding the right mix between finance and data skills is essential for finance teams that need to become increasingly strategic in an AI-first world. As the promise of AI is realized, for future professionals in these areas, “being able to translate the data the AI is telling them, apply it to a business context and make recommendations to their business and their clients is super important,” Lang said.

Eighty-six percent of companies ranked being able to tap generative AI and technology to drive innovation and insight as a top priority: however, only 16% said they were “very confident in their ability to execute on their data strategy and not even one in four say they have a high maturity of data management in their tax function,” EY’s survey found. Additionally, 64% cited the lack of a sustainable plan for data and technology as the reason behind their inability to deliver on their function’s “vision and purpose,”

“How do we take large data, how do we fill gaps in the data, and how do we automate the processes and train automation?” Lang said. “So I still think there is a level of rust, [there’s] still a short barrier in finance that's got to be overcome.”