Gap in leader and practitioner perception of AI results leads to trust issues
Seven-in-10 executive leaders judge their AI deployments successful, but only half of practitioners actually working with those tools agree. As this gap between potential and reality stretches, research from Certinia found that only a fifth of AI adopters find the technology “exceeds their expectation”.
As results continue to underwhelm on the technology, many investors are suddenly looking at substantial AI spending, and wondering when the returns advertised will start to materialise. When IBM polled an international cohort of CEOs, for example, the researchers found that progress to realise that was slow. In 2024, two-thirds of leaders said they expected to move beyond the piloting phase of AI changes, but a year later, 60% were still stuck in the nascent period of experimenting.
Even amid this, as pressure mounts from investors keen to see a return on the funding they have pumped into the race for AI, a mounting amount of research also suggests many bosses over-estimate the impact AI is having, or have no understanding of how they would actually measure such returns. Meanwhile, various studies have revealed that only a fraction of firms spending big on AI see any return at all.
The latest study showing a growing split between expectations and reality in the c-suite, comes from Certinia. While 69% of executive leaders describe their AI deployments as successful, only 53% of professional services and customer success decision-makers and practitioners agree.
Looking more specifically across the professional services sphere, there was also a divide between consulting and accounting. While 55% of respondents claimed AI had succeeded at consulting firms, that fell to 43% in the audit, accounting and tax space – places where ‘hallucinations’ can have much graver implications than the broadly unregulated space of advisory work.
DJ Paoni, chief executive officer at Certinia, explained, “A few years ago, professional services firms were racing to get AI in the door. They succeeded. AI is now pervasive. But this year’s Global Service Dynamics survey data shows something the adoption numbers never could: the same tools are producing wildly different results, and the gap between the firms getting value and the ones getting noise has almost nothing to do with how much AI they bought.”
Only 20% of organisations to that end said their AI results had exceeded expectations. But while many of the leading barriers to adoption will be familiar – trust, governance, and skills rather than budget – one stands out. Amid the widening disconnect between boardroom expectations, and material results, employee distrust of AI results is a top adoption barrier for 33% of firms.
According to the report, skills gaps and employee distrust weigh more heavily on organisations whose programs have stalled than budget or leadership support ever do. And the researchers believe that one antidote to this, is to increase the levels of connectivity. Among respondents describing outcomes from collaboration across Sales, Delivery, Customer Success, and Finance, 57% reported improved customer satisfaction, 56% higher employee productivity, 54% better forecasting accuracy and reduced rework, and 52% each improved profit margins and customer retention. For that leading 20% seeing AI exceeding expectations, connectivity is the machinery that turns collaboration into margin, retention, and trustworthy forecasts.
Paoni added, “The organizations reporting the strongest AI results, the highest margins, and real net expansion are consistently two to three times as likely to run their business on connected systems as the organisations struggling on each of those fronts. Connection – so that what Sales promises, Delivery can staff, Finance can see, and Customer Success can build on – has become the clearest dividing line in the sector. Where it is missing, even good technology struggles to pay off.”
