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In Dr. Jesse Robertson's ACCT 5410 (External Auditing) course, students aren't just learning how to audit, they're learning how to audit in a world where GenAI is already part of the toolkit. Through a two-part case study, Dr. Robertson is training the next generation of auditors to use AI the way the profession increasingly demands.

According to Dr. Robertson, “It is critical to identify ways to implement AI in the classroom given its use in accounting practice. This case study provides students with valuable experience in seeing how AI can improve efficiency in audit settings, and the importance of human oversight of AI tools in practice.”

In the first part of the case, students select a GenAI tool and use it to summarize key requirements from an official auditing standard, along with technical pension accounting guidance. They then apply what they've learned to work through a real casebook question on auditing pension estimates — one of the more complex, judgment-heavy areas in the field. It's a chance to see AI not as a shortcut, but as a research partner that still requires a trained eye to use well.

The second part of the case raises the stakes. Adapted from PwC's "Build the Output" AI case, students are handed two real-world style documents: a prior-year audit planning kickoff agenda and a current-year client information packet. Their task? Upload both to a GenAI tool and produce a new kickoff agenda matching the original's structure and formatting but updated to reflect what's changed. Along the way, students have to catch any new, missing ot potentially inaccurate information between the two documents, the kind of detail-spotting that sits at the heart of good auditing.

What ties both parts together is something every future auditor needs to internalize: documentation. Students are required to record exactly how they used AI, which tool they chose, the key prompts they used, and, most importantly, how they reviewed and verified the AI's output before relying on it. In a profession built on evidence and accountability, that habit may be just as valuable as the technical skills the case is designed to teach.

It's a glimpse of where accounting education is headed. Not away from rigor, but toward a new kind of rigor. One where knowing how to work with AI is inseparable from knowing how to think like an auditor.