Advisory & Audit

Even the advisors need evidence. Especially the advisors.

In October 2025, one of the Big Four refunded part of a AU$440,000 fee to the Australian government. The report, an independent assurance review, contained a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment and references to research that doesn’t exist, traced to generative AI used in drafting. The story isn’t that a consultancy used AI. The story is that the firms whose product is judgment deployed it without evidence.

An audit opinion, a due-diligence finding, an accreditation decision: each is a statement clients, markets, and courts are meant to rely on. Professional standards already encode this. Audit documentation must let an experienced auditor understand what was done and why the conclusions hold. The moment AI drafts, screens, or scores inside that work, the same duty attaches to the AI’s steps. An AI-assisted audit whose AI contribution can’t be reconstructed has a documentation problem at the core of the engagement.

Every major firm is deploying AI across audit, tax, deals, and advisory, at exactly the moment regulators are asking their clients for demonstrable AI control. An advisor who can’t evidence their own AI use is selling a standard they don’t meet. Clients will notice. Opposing counsel already has.

Certifiers exist to make trust transferable; standards like ISO/IEC 42006 now govern who may certify AI management systems. A certification decision assisted by AI that can’t show its trail is a decision an appeal can unwind. The instance that vouches must be the best-evidenced actor in the room.

An advisory or accreditation firm whose AI runs on forensic evidence, with every draft, screen, and score governed, signed, and producible, doesn’t just protect its engagements. It can walk into any client and say the one sentence that wins the next decade of professional services: our AI is held to the standard we hold you to. That is the partnership we’re building. We provide the evidence layer; the advisors provide the judgment; the client gets both, on the record.

― basis: Deloitte Australia / DEWR report refund (Oct 2025, public record) · audit documentation standards (ISA 230 logic) · ISO/IEC 42006 · EU AI Act Art. 12, 14