Last Friday, our normally quiet audit and tax office in Johor Bahru felt different.

No tax files.
No audit checklists.
Just one whiteboard, AI tools and revisit to Co-Star prompting, and a room full of curious faces — including our receptionist.

Why did I run this AI session?

Because I believe the future of work is knocking on our door, and we must be ready to open it.

Some looked skeptical.
“AI for accountants, really?”
“Will I be replaced?”

Fair questions. So I started with this:

According to McKinsey,
78% of companies are using AI — but only 17% are seeing real results.

Why the gap?

Because many companies treat AI as a tool, not a transformation.

Here’s what usually goes wrong:
• AI isn’t built into the workflow.
Most teams use AI as an add-on, not as part of how work gets done. Like buying a robot helper but never letting it work.

• Staff aren’t AI-ready.
A tool is only as powerful as the person using it.

So we did more than just talk. I tried. Hands-on.

Here’s what we explored last Friday in one hour sharing :

1. Google Notebook LLM
   Like an intelligent research assistant. We fed it a tax circular — it summarised key points in seconds. Our junior auditor was amazed.
2. Google AI Studio
   A beginner-friendly tool to test and build simple AI models. We played with it to understand how things work behind the scenes.
3. OpenAI Academy
   A free learning platform from the team behind ChatGPT. Perfect for anyone to explore AI, anytime, at their own pace.

The vibe? Full of “Aha!” moments.

I also told the team why I personally led this.

I’m not from IT. I’m a tax agent. An auditor.
But I believe every leader must now embrace AI — not to replace people, but to empower them.

By standing in front of that whiteboard, I wanted to show one thing :

AI is not optional. It’s part of our strategy. And we’re all in — together.