The Intuit-OpenAI Partnership: Why Curiosity Is Your Competitive Edge

My phone chimed with a new text alert from Donna, “Well, this is interesting.” A screen shot of the Intuit Announcement partnering with OpenAI appears. QuickBooks, TurboTax, all the tools we probably use - just partnered with OpenAI. They're baking AI into everything. Tax prep. Bookkeeping. Financial analysis. The stuff we use to pay our mortgage.

Did you freak out, too? You did! I saw your Facebook posts! Like me, did you think, "Well, I’m screwed.” I must admit, though, I usually have a negative reaction whenever something changes. I say to myself, “So, this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a software update.” This AI stuff is a major change. It moved in and changed the locks.  

I pulled out those Inspirational Notes I keep on my phone figuring they’d come in handy one day and read, “Every obstacle is an opportunity. Go find it.” Ok. How can I think of this differently?  

There it was. Staring me in the face. Curiosity. [Face Slap]. That is the one thing I have that AI does not.  

It's not the answers. It's the questions.  

We are asking the wrong question. Our fear is backwards. We are asking: "What can AI do that I do?" 

That's the fear question. It leads to panic. There we are, scrolling LinkedIn at 2 AM looking at career change articles.  We are wondering, is it too late to become a plumber?  

The right question is: "What can I do that AI can't?"   

I did a little digging.   

What the research says  

MIT just published research that should make you feel better, not worse. 

MIT researchers Isabella Loaiza and Roberto Rigobon went full data detective on the U.S. labor market using O*NET, the government’s giant database of what people actually do all day at work. They broke jobs into thousands of specific tasks and built something called the EPOCH index to see which tasks are deeply human, which are easier for AI and where the two can team up.  

What they found? Between 2016 and 2024, the number of human-intensive tasks actually increased. The tasks that were added to jobs had higher levels of human capabilities than the ones that disappeared. 

They created this whole framework called EPOCH. Five categories of human capabilities: 

• Empathy and emotional intelligence 

• Planning under uncertainty 

• Originality and creativity 

• Complex communication 

• Hope, vision, and leadership 

Not soft skills; hard-to-automate skills. AI can’t touch these.  

The researchers found that AI is augmenting work, not replacing it. Making humans more productive at the things only humans can do. 

Here's the catch. This only works if you stay curious. 

How does that translate to us?   

AI can analyze your client's financials in seconds. Perfect analysis. Spot every variance. Flag three concerning trends. Suggest four solutions. 

All technically correct. All completely wrong for your client. 

Why? The AI in QuickBooks has no Journal Entry for the client's kid just starting college. No Prepaid Expense indicating the owner wants to retire in three years. No Write-off showing your client is nervous about debt because of a personal catastrophe.  

AI only has data. You have the notes from your Zoom call 6 months ago when they told you what keeps them up at night. That's what AI doesn't have. 

The people getting powerful with AI ask better questions. Not just more questions. Better ones. 

• Start asking: "What am I missing?" 

• Start asking: "Let’s challenge this assumption." 

• Start asking: "What would happen if this went wrong?" 

Now the uncomfortable part. Most of us don't want to be curious. We want to be done. 

Curiosity is uncomfortable. It means admitting you don't know. It means following threads that might not lead anywhere. It means sometimes AI gives you an answer that makes your original question look stupid. 

Good! 

The communication gap 

AI speaks in probabilities and patterns. Your clients speak in fear and hope. 

Are people hiring you to run numbers? They hire you to translate their anxiety into a plan. AI can tell them they'll probably be fine in retirement.  You can tell them: "Look, here's what we're going to do about that thing that's worrying you. Here's why it's going to work. And here's what we'll do if it doesn't." 

See the difference? One's information. The other's communication. AI has one. You have both. 

Now the uncomfortable part 

This is the part nobody wants to hear; you only have that advantage if you're curious. 

If you're just regurgitating what AI tells you, you're a slower, more expensive version of AI. That's not a career. That's a countdown. The Intuit partnership should scare you if you've been phoning it in. If your value proposition is "I know how to use QuickBooks," Guess what? AI knows it better. 

When your value is "I understand your business and I'm curious about how to make it better"? You just reclaimed your power. 

Now AI handles the grunt work while you do the thing AI can't do - CARE. 

The real partnership 

Here's what the Intuit-OpenAI thing actually means. 

It means the boring stuff gets automated. Data entry. Basic analysis. Pattern recognition. Filing. Great. I never liked doing that anyway!  

Now our job is fun! Keeps our brain “alive”. Our creativity is awakened again. We become Possibility Thinkers versus Compliance Do-ers.  All the stuff that makes us human: Judgment. Context. Relationships. Curiosity about whether the technically correct answer is actually the best answer for this person in this situation. AI has no clue about that.  

In other words: AI is brilliant until it hits Tuesday afternoon in a conference room when someone's scared about their business. That's when you matter. 

The questions that save you 

So, what do you do? Simple. Start asking better questions. Not just of AI but of yourself. 

When AI gives you an answer, ask: 

• "What doesn't this account for?" 

• "What human factor would change this?" 

• "What would I need to know about this client to know if this is actually right?" 

When you're talking to clients, ask: 

• "What are you worried about that you haven't told me?" 

• "What would success actually feel like?" 

• "What would you do if money wasn't the constraint?" 

Those questions keep you valuable. AI can't ask them because it doesn't know to wonder. It doesn't get curious about the gap between what someone says and what they mean. 

You do. 

One last thing 

The Intuit partnership is not the end. It is the beginning of you being better at your job than you ever thought possible. 

If you let it. 

The fear you're feeling? Appropriate. Things are changing fast. Fear has two responses: Freeze or Adapt. 

You’ll freeze if you think your job is to “know stuff”. Bad news? AI knows more stuff than you ever will.  

So, choose Adapt. Your job is understanding people and using every tool available including AI to help them better. What do they want? What are their dreams? Who are they? AI does not know. YOU DO!  

The partnership isn't Intuit and OpenAI. The partnership is you and AI. 

So, stay curious (about the AI data results, sure) but more importantly about your clients as people. Keep asking the questions AI can't ask. Remember your clients don't need a calculator. They have that already. They need someone who cares enough to wonder what's really going on. 

That's you. 

AI can't fake that. Everything else? That's just fancy autocomplete with really good math. 

Editor’s Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are solely their own and do not reflect the views of The Woodard Report, Woodard Events, LLC, or any affiliated organizations. The content is provided for informational purposes and should not be interpreted as an official position of any Woodard entity.