February 20, 2026
Dear Friends,
When I was ten years old, I spent my afternoons sweeping floors at my father’s wholesale printing company. My dad never went to college, but he possessed an uncanny superpower: he could hear a 1/16th-inch mechanical misalignment simply from a subtle shift in the roar of the printing press. That wasn't a metric on a dashboard. That was muscle memory.
Fast forward to my twenties, trading derivatives at Morgan Stanley, and later leading massive operational teams as a Big 4 Audit Director at Deloitte and PwC. The environment was wildly different from a noisy print shop, but the core principle remained the same. We built our professional instincts—our muscle memory—by digging through the raw, unpolished data. We learned to recognize the slight anomalies and minor flaws that signaled a massive risk long before a formal report was ever generated.
Today, the accounting and consulting industries are in a race to aggressively integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics into their daily operations. I am a firm believer in this technological evolution; it drives unprecedented efficiency and scales consulting firm growth.
But I have to ask: in our rush to automate, are we losing our ear for the machine?
When algorithms do the heavy lifting, professional services personnel risk an atrophy of their operational muscle memory. We are trading the friction of deep analysis for the convenience of instant dashboards. The danger isn't that the AI will make a massive, glaring mistake. The danger lies in unmanaged operations where AI makes a minor contextual error, and our teams no longer possess the foundational instincts to catch it.
Research backs up this phenomenon. According to an analysis published in the Harvard Business Review on cognitive automation, when professionals overly rely on intelligent systems, they fall victim to "automation bias"—a state where operators lose the situational awareness required to detect edge-case anomalies (Davenport & Ronanki, 2018). In short: when we stop doing the reps, we lose the strength.
Think about your own practice. If the system goes down tomorrow, do your junior analysts still know how to pressure-test the underlying assumptions?
As I watch my wife Shannon meticulously drape fabrics to perfect a design for her fashion line, or as I explain the nuances of critical thinking to my teenage daughters, Sienna and Makenna, while our Frenchie snores at our feet, I am constantly reminded that true mastery cannot be entirely outsourced. You have to get your hands dirty.
To elevate your firm’s level of service and gain new clients, you must make a conscious "decision switch." Embrace the analytics, yes. But intentionally build friction back into your training models. Force your teams to manually audit the AI's logic.
Clarity breeds confidence. And true clarity only comes when you trust the technology, but verify it with the undeniable power of human muscle memory.
Best Wishes,
Jack
[1] Reichheld, F. F. (n.d.). Prescription for cutting costs. Harvard Business Review. (Based on Bain & Company research regarding the economics of customer retention).
