PwC US will put more than 85,000 staff through a new critical thinking certificate from December, as the firm tries to protect a skill it says artificial intelligence is quietly eroding. The programme covers employees across PwC’s US and Mexico offices and those in its Acceleration Centers, which support client work and business operations. PwC wants participants to finish by the end of its fiscal year in June 2027.
Yolanda Seals-Coffield, chief people and inclusion officer at PwC US, said the reasoning behind the move is that AI now handles the research, writing and analysis that staff once did by hand. As AI takes on more of these foundational tasks, she said, some of the repetition that helped staff develop critical thinking and judgment will no longer be there.
The certificate sits inside a wider framework. PwC has identified 15 AI skills and 15 human skills, among them empathy and adaptability, which it says will set employees apart. Critical thinking and judgment, which the firm treats as central, is the focus of this certification.
Staff work through it over roughly six months in stages. It opens with an assessment of a person’s thinking style, asking whether they question assumptions, reflect or lean towards being a pragmatist. Then come classes developed with professors and veteran PwC staffers, followed by realistic simulations where employees apply the framework to their own work. In one example, an employee reviews an AI-generated assessment of a company’s internal controls, spots deficiencies and challenges the tool’s conclusions. A personalised AI coach is added at the next stage, tailored to seniority, to help with daily tasks such as practising difficult conversations or preparing for client meetings.
There is no pass or fail exam. Development leaders assess proficiency as part of the performance review process and Seals-Coffield said the point is to give people repeatable skills and measure them against those skills at year end.
PwC says junior work is already changing. First-year associates now do different work than they did two years ago. A recent PwC analysis of US job listings found entry-level roles exposed to AI were far more likely to call for traditionally senior skills, including judgment and leadership, than in 2019.
The firm’s global 2026 AI Jobs Barometer, dated June 2026, found the most AI-exposed junior roles are seven times more likely than the least exposed to demand traditionally senior skills like leadership. Seniorised entry-level roles have grown 35% since 2019, while overall early-career postings have flatlined in highly AI-exposed sectors. The barometer also found that new tasks added to AI-exposed roles are 2.5 times more likely to rely on skills such as empathy, judgement and creativity.
