The Next Ascent: Navigating finance careers amid AI, data, and green revolutions

For generations, finance careers followed a familiar path.

Graduates entered as analysts, mastered technical accounting, moved into management, and eventually climbed the corporate ladder towards leadership. Progression was largely vertical. The deeper your expertise in finance, the higher you advance.

That model is beginning to break down.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is automating routine financial work, sustainability reporting is becoming a boardroom priority, and businesses are making decisions using increasingly interconnected data. As organisations become more complex, finance leaders are expected to understand far more than finance.

The result is a fundamental redesign of career paths.

Rather than climbing a ladder within a single discipline, tomorrow's finance professionals are likely to build careers that span multiple functions, acquiring capabilities in data science, sustainability, technology, governance, and business strategy before stepping into leadership.

In conversation with People Matters, Lucia Real-Martin, Executive Director of Relationships at ACCA, believes this transition is already underway.

"We see through our research in career paths that it's about building, from an employer's perspective, very inclusive careers,” she said.

The shift is less about changing jobs and more about changing perspectives.

From specialists to connectors

Finance has traditionally rewarded deep technical expertise.

That remains important. Audit, tax, financial planning, reporting and assurance will continue to underpin the profession. But increasingly, organisations are looking for professionals who can connect these disciplines with emerging business priorities rather than operate within functional silos.

Real-Martin points to data science as one of the clearest examples.

"We already have an emphasis on data science, and it’s becoming increasingly connected to finance."

Sustainability is creating a similar opportunity.

As environmental reporting and assurance become embedded into business strategy, professionals with sustainability expertise are beginning to move closer to finance, and emerging from finance backgrounds.

"We definitely see sustainability leaders... taking that finance acumen to the next level."

The same is true for AI, feels Real-Martin.

Rather than simply understanding technology, future finance professionals will need to understand how AI is governed, how risks are managed and how ethical frameworks are built around intelligent systems.

"You can't only be a technologist. You're going to have to understand what it means to build risk management processes and governance around AI."

Together, these changes point towards a different kind of finance leader, one who succeeds by connecting disciplines rather than mastering only one.

Why career ladders are losing relevance

The traditional career ladder assumes expertise grows within a single function.

But today's business challenges rarely fit neatly into one department.

Real-Martin explains that a finance leader evaluating an AI investment may need to understand data governance, cybersecurity risks, sustainability obligations, regulatory expectations and long-term business strategy alongside financial performance.

Similarly, sustainability reporting is no longer solely an ESG responsibility. It increasingly requires finance teams to measure, assure and communicate non-financial performance with the same rigour as financial reporting.

In this environment, career mobility becomes more valuable than career linearity.

Professionals who have worked across different functions, according to Real-Martin, develop broader commercial judgement and are often better equipped to solve complex business problems than those who have spent their careers in a single specialism.

Employers must rethink career development

The transition from career ladders to career lattices also changes how organisations develop talent.

Instead of preparing employees for the next promotion within the same function, employers will need to create opportunities for cross-functional learning, project-based experiences and exposure to emerging disciplines.

Real-Martin believes organisations cannot redesign these pathways alone.

"It's actually a three-part conversation,” she noted.

Professional bodies, employers and governments all have a role in preparing future talent for careers that will look very different from those of previous generations.

That also means recognising that younger professionals will not develop in the same way as today's leaders.

"We can't assume that what we went through, how we learned, is how they're going to learn."

Leadership will be built through breadth

Perhaps the biggest misconception about career growth is that becoming a leader means becoming increasingly specialised.

The opposite may be true.

As AI reduces the value of routine technical work, organisations will increasingly look for leaders who can bridge disciplines, interpret complexity and connect insights across functions.

Real-Martin sees finance becoming one of the professions best positioned to do exactly that.

"The future is about building businesses. Business acumen and communication skills become equally important."

The future finance career, then, is unlikely to be defined by how quickly professionals climb the ladder.

It will be defined by how widely they are willing to move across it.

In an AI-enabled economy, the strongest careers may not belong to those who rise in a straight line, but to those who build a lattice of experiences that allows them to connect technology, sustainability, governance and finance into better business decisions.