John Fogarty harnesses technological change rather than reacting to it.  

Can you share the most interesting part of your career journey?

There are many anecdotes about how people need to reinvent themselves to keep up with the rate of technological change. Deloitte is a great place for people to harness technological change throughout their career rather than simply react to it, and my career journey is just one of many examples.

I started charting a different course than your typical auditor when I joined our efforts to transform our audits and bring them into a truly digital environment. During my time in that role, I started to appreciate the potential power of data and technology (including AI-enabled tools) when integrated into a digital platform.

Over the years, my interest turned toward how Deloitte can provide attest services in areas beyond our core financial statement audits.

During a temporary rotation in our National Office, I focused on attest services around emerging technologies (including AI) and laid the groundwork for my current role where I am helping shape the Audit firm’s future services as AI-enabled technologies become more established in our everyday lives.

What excites you most about working with data and AI?

When I think back on what I was doing well when I was a more typical auditor in the field, there was a heavy focus on past events and transactions. As a result, many conversations with clients focus on what happened and why. You do learn a lot by understanding the story of past transactions; however, it is also important to keep at least one eye, so to speak, on the future. I see this as a key area where our clients produce, obtain, or maintain enormous amounts of data and are working toward how they can harness that data to help them solve problems and, in some cases, transform their business.

This AI adoption journey will require effective integration of existing monitoring and oversight processes, especially related to data management and cybersecurity, with new processes to address specific AI-related risks.

Many of the current themes in the news around AI-related transparency and trust align closely with core values that auditors provide the market and broader society.

Going forward, I see this as an important area, where auditors can start to move toward the future in their client conversations, helping companies effectively and safely scale AI throughout their organizations.

Describe an interesting project that you have worked on.

There is one aspect that I think gets lost in some of the current conversations about effective oversight of AI-enabled technologies. Due to the volume of data and, in certain cases, complexity of the models used, organizations will need to use AI and automated technology to help them track data, evaluate outputs from models, escalate, and resolve issues in a timely manner.

With the strides made in robotic process automation and intelligent automation, organizations are starting to become more digital and attuned to the need to use technology to augment human capabilities, especially when it comes to oversight and governance.

One of the core projects that I have been working on is figuring out how to integrate the appropriate technological tools with relevant or specifically-designed processes to enable effective oversight and testing of AI models. This is and will continue to be a key capability as organizations adopt and scale AI throughout their organizations.