KPMG tests simulation tool to train tax staff

Business Insider reports that KPMG US is testing an AI-powered simulation tool to train its tax staffers. Per Business Insider, Brad Brown, KPMG's chief digital officer for tax, said the tool aims to help employees develop the judgment that once came from repetitive return preparation. Brown is quoted saying, "You're not going to get as many repetitions of doing that task as you would have in the past," and he told Business Insider an early-career tax professional typically spent about four years preparing returns in sequence to gain that experience. Business Insider frames the initiative as an internal test rather than a widely released product.

Simulation-based training is an established technique in other high-stakes domains, notably aviation and healthcare, where repeated exposure to varied scenarios accelerates experiential learning. For tax work, simulation tools can present a large volume of synthetic or anonymized real-world cases and instant feedback loops, enabling faster pattern recognition than limited on-the-job encounters. Industry implementations commonly pair simulations with explainable feedback and scenario variation to cover edge cases tax staff might otherwise rarely see.

Companies across professional services have reported automation of repetitive tasks through AI, creating a gap between task execution and judgment formation. Observed patterns in similar transitions show firms experimenting with reskilling and simulation to preserve institutional expertise while adopting automation. These experiments commonly surface practical questions about data anonymization, scenario validity, and assessment metrics for judgment rather than rote accuracy.

• •Whether KPMG publishes evaluation metrics or learning outcomes from the pilot, which would allow comparison to traditional on-the-job training.
• •How simulation inputs are sourced and anonymized to avoid client privacy risks.
• •Adoption patterns across peer firms in accounting and consulting, which will reveal if simulation training scales beyond pilot programs.

Practitioners evaluating simulation training should examine scenario diversity, feedback explainability, and measurement of judgment rather than only throughput. Industry observers note that establishing benchmark tasks and clear competency metrics is essential to validate that simulation-derived experience transfers to real client work.

Note: All factual claims above are from Business Insider reporting and direct quotes attributed to Brad Brown as published by Business Insider.