PwC is putting more than 85,000 of its United States partners and staff through a new certification in critical thinking, a program backed by more than $100 million that starts in December. The training is a response to a change inside the firm: artificial intelligence now handles research, writing and first drafts of analysis that junior staff once did by hand, and PwC wants its people to keep checking the machine’s work. The PwC critical thinking certificate will ask employees to question AI-generated conclusions, spot errors and make decisions the firm can stand behind.
PwC critical thinking certification starts in December
The PwC critical thinking program will roll out across PwC’s offices in the United States and Mexico, along with its Acceleration Centers, which support client work from offshore locations. Staff will start with a diagnostic that sorts them by thinking style and flags strengths and weak spots. From there they will work through realistic simulations built around their own jobs, including one in which an AI tool produces an assessment of a company’s internal controls and the employee has to find what it got wrong. A personalized AI coach will then help staff apply what they learned to daily tasks, from preparing for client meetings to practicing difficult conversations.
Yolanda Seals-Coffield, PwC US chief people and inclusion officer, said the firm identified 15 AI skills and 15 human skills, including empathy and adaptability, that it says will set employees apart. Critical thinking and judgment sit at the center of the PwC critical thinking program, she said, alongside training in responsible use of AI and professional skepticism. The certification is expected to take about six months, and the firm aims to have participants finish by the end of its fiscal year in June 2027. Progress will feed into performance reviews, so managers will judge whether staff are applying the lessons in their day-to-day work.
In one simulation, staff receive an AI-generated assessment of a company’s internal controls and must work out where the tool’s logic breaks down. In another, the tool produces a tax analysis and the employee has to trace where it pulled its data from instead of trusting the output. Margaret Burke, PwC US leader of talent acquisition and development, gave the tax example in an interview with Human Resources Director, saying the training teaches staff to follow the tool’s reasoning step by step.
How the PwC critical thinking training works
The PwC critical thinking certificate grew out of a problem the firm has watched closely. As generative AI handles more preliminary work, younger employees get fewer chances to build judgment through the slow tasks that once taught it. PwC plans to share its critical thinking framework with universities beginning in 2027, so students arrive with the same habits the firm is teaching its own staff. Bloomberg Tax first reported the plan on November 9, and Inc. covered the announcement on November 10.
The announcement followed a report that has rattled professional services firms. Last week, the Financial Times covered a GPTZero investigation that found 31 hallucinated citations among 245 references in three papers linked to Accenture. GPTZero said it has found invented citations in reports from all four of the largest accounting firms over the past year, PwC included. The PwC critical thinking certificate is the firm’s answer to that risk: staff who can check an AI output line by line, rather than pass it on.
PwC critical thinking and the hallucination problem
For clients, the change is meant to show up in the work itself. A tax analysis or a controls assessment that passes through the PwC critical thinking program should carry fewer unchecked AI claims, because the person who signed it had to trace how the tool reached its answer. PwC has not said how it will measure the program’s effect on client work, and the certification does not change who is responsible when an AI output is wrong. The firm still owns the advice it gives.
What happens next
The first groups start in December, and the rollout will reach the firm’s United States and Mexico offices and its Acceleration Centers in stages. Universities will get access to the framework in 2027, and PwC expects the full certification to be complete by June 2027.