Great accountants think differently, and in 2027 they think with a machine in the room. In this energising 100-minute session Des O'Neill helps you step back from the day-to-day and sharpen the way you think, decide and lead. You will put Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time, Black Box Thinking and Obvious Adams to work on your own firm, build your own advisory board (human and AI), and for each step ask one question: how can AI help me with this? You keep the judgement. The machine gives you the leverage. You leave with your 2027 one-page strategy, seven decisions made and the prompts to keep thinking clearly all year.
Success in accounting has always been about how you think, not just what you know. In this 100-minute session Des O'Neill shows you how to do your best thinking in 2027 with a machine in the room: you keep the judgement, the machine gives you the leverage, and it never gets the final say. You leave with your 2027 one-page strategy, seven decisions made and an AI advisory board you built yourself.
Beyond the Numbers in 2025 gave you the 7 Steps to Smarter Thinking. In 2027 the steps stay and the method changes. Every one of them now has a human half and a machine half.
The human half is the thinking that cannot be delegated. Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time from The Road Less Stupid: a chair, a pen, a question and 45 minutes a week. Black Box Thinking: surviving is not learning, so where did the friction, the gaps and the failures happen in 2026? Obvious Adams: doing the obvious thing while everyone else is being clever. Building your own advisory board. Protecting the markers that keep your thinking sharp: sleep, exercise, physical and mental energy.
The machine half makes each of those easier to do and harder to skip. A Thinking Time companion that interviews you and argues the other side. A Black Box Auditor that finds the pattern in your year and asks the question you have been avoiding. An Obvious Adams prompt that strips away the cleverness. An AI advisory board with four or five seats, built in the room, that you can put any decision to on a Monday morning.
This is a session on becoming an AI driven leader: AI as a thinking partner on everything, with human judgement in charge. It is not an AI course. It is a thinking course for a year when the thinking is the only part of the job that is still yours alone.
Des O’Neill will cover the following topics during this session:
1. Thinking is the superpower
The shift from compliance to curiosity. Why amateurs chase the spectacular and professionals master the mundane [CONFIRM: Tadhg Furlong story stays as the performance-mindset example]. Your business and personal satisfaction scores for 2026, 1 to 10. The deal for 2027: human judgement, machine leverage.
2. Thinking Time
Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time: the chair, the pen, the question, 45 minutes a week. The highest-paid work a practice owner does. The questions worth asking. Machine move: the Thinking Time companion, which interviews you on your question, argues the other side and refuses to answer for you.
3. Black Box Thinking: the 2026 audit
Surviving is not learning. Where did client friction, team gaps and technology failures happen this year? The flight recorder, not the blame. Machine move: the Black Box Auditor, which takes the year's wins, losses and near misses and finds the pattern.
4. Obvious Adams
Do the obvious thing while everyone else is being clever. Simple costs a fortune, complicated is free. Lies crossed out, truth circled. Machine move: the Obvious Adams prompt, which keeps asking what you already know you should do.
5. Build your own advisory board
Mentors, peers, a mastermind and the person who tells you the truth. Who sits at your table and who should not. Machine move: the AI advisory board, four or five seats (the finance director, the sceptic, the ideal client, the coach, the regulator) built live in Copilot or Claude and given the same question.
6. The 7 Steps for 2027, upgraded
Letting Go, People, Pricing, Business Development, Technology and AI, Personal Development (your markers), Execution. One human question and one prompt per step, worked fast in the workbook.
7. Your 2027 one-page strategy and your ONE Thing
Financial, operational, people and personal strategy, three projects and three objectives on one page. The January 2028 question: what would have to have happened for 2027 to be your best year yet? Your ONE Thing.
This session will be of particular interest to:
By attending this session you will:
Course Level: Need to Know
Des O'Neill
