She Left Audit at KPMG, PKF Littlejohn and RSM to Rebuild How Finance Works | Esther Adeogun

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Recorded14 Sep 2026

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Most finance teams start closing the month before the month has even finished.Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠Turn audit and finance expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠Build the design partner deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠Esther Adeogun spent over a decade in audit and assurance across KPMG Nigeria, WYZE, Sapro, PKF Littlejohn and RSM UK, working between Lagos and London. She audited multinationals with US, Canadian and Australian parent structures. She then left professional services to found Valdore Systems and Intelligence Limited (VSIL), a pre-product platform building what she calls an intelligent operating layer: financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility embedded directly into business workflows rather than applied after the fact.The pattern that convinced her was not jurisdictional. Across Lagos, London and multinational engagements she kept meeting the same problem. Organisations had invested heavily in software, yet finance teams still ran on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations and judgement applied outside the system. Some of her design partners begin their July month-end work in the second or third week of July in order to report to management by 4 August. That is time taken away from professional judgement and scepticism, and Esther argues the gap between activity and visibility is the thing worth closing, not the accounting concepts underneath it.In this episode:The one sentence she would give a Fortune 500 CEO: an intelligent operating layer embedding financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility into business workflowsThe exact shift from auditor to founder, moving from "what went wrong" to "why did the system allow this to happen in the first place"Why real-time reporting does not overturn the historical cost concept, and what she actually means by real-timeWhat SAP, Oracle and Microsoft would say in response, and where the design philosophies genuinely divergeWhere AI earns its place, and the deterministic, rules-based work that should stay conventional software"Consulting is largely constrained by people and time" and why that pushed her to SaaS instead of another consulting firmThe four eras of accounting: paper, spreadsheets, ERP, and AI-assisted decision-makingWhether the Big Four look the same in 2035, and why she thinks firms evolve rather than disappearNigeria rewards technical skill, the UK rewards relationships, and what that cost her to learnWhy she no longer believes progress is linear, and what experimentation replaced it withRapid fire: the biggest misconception about AI, the biggest misconception about accounting, and the technology she is watchingHer legacy test: not to be remembered for building software but for helping build better businessesMore from Esther: LinkedIn (personal): ⁠linkedin.com/in/esther-adeogun-0b9118125⁠ LinkedIn (company): ⁠linkedin.com/company/valdore-systems-intelligence-ltd⁠Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.#AIinAccounting #ContinuousAssurance #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast

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