Travis Auld CA takes the inside lane when he sees it – a philosophy from his very first role at William Buck. Today, he brings a chartered accountant’s discipline to data-led decisions regarding the Australian Grand Prix and MotoGP. The stakes are high: the 2025 Grand Prix contributed over A$268 million to Victoria and supported more than 1145 full-time jobs. Auld’s message to CAs is clear: back yourself, take smart risks and build skills that let you move when the gap opens.

Are you hooked on true crime and police procedurals? Meet the forensic chartered accountants working inside the police force. From tracing illicit funds to strengthening financial intelligence, they show how professional scepticism and audit discipline can accelerate complex investigations and recoveries.

Staying with our crime-busting theme, we unpack New Zealand’s emerging strategy to curb company phoenixing, drawing on Australia’s Director ID initiative. Learn what stronger identity controls and cross-agency enforcement mean for directors and other finance professionals.

Then, we speak to The Empathy Gap author Daniel Murray, who makes the case for empathy as a leadership superpower. Could you combine compassion with strength and choose to connect rather than command, in order to inspire loyalty, trust and resilience?

In tech strategy, we ask whether your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software should bake in AI, or if ERP and AI belong on separate platforms. We weigh the integration benefits against modular flexibility to help you choose a path that fits your organisation.

Read all this and more in the January–March 2026 edition of Acuity.