What is the future of the accounting profession and accounting-related professions?

Outsourced to who? Other accounting firms?  Strict laws and regulations within the U.S. have only prevented auditing from being outsourced or off-shored, not the other way around.  Hiring of accounting majors and CPAs has increased drastically in the past few years, and so have the salaries with the demand.  Government accounting & auditing is especially big right now, as well as any of the "Big 4".  Across most universities in the U.S., accounting is one of, if not the most currently sought after degree for employers.

Those are not contradictory. Outsourcing just means that some other country can do the same job better and cheaper that you can get done locally. It says nothing about the growth of the job market. If anything I would say that outsourcing means that the market is growing (and another country has beat you to the punch in meeting the growing demand) As long as their are financial laws there will be a need for accountants to enforce and interpret and navigate these laws. More complicated the laws, the more skilled accountants you will need.

I agree with both of those statements, and I believe there will be lots of opportunity within accountancy once you break down what it is being offered. What do you consider accounting to be? For me it's about providing great information to people running businesses so they can learn and understand what's going on within them, and then make great decisions. To facilitate this, outsourcing is absolutely on the increase, and with improved technology this will be even bigger in the future. The engine room of accounting needs to be commoditised, by which I mean the processing of data needs to be automated. With companies like Entryless providing invoice OCR reading, thousands of hours can be saved entering data. And the technology is improving all the time. Infact, in Sweden invoices are sent electronically and so have no human contact at all (a government initiative). This applies across all data entry points, from accounts receivable to payroll. Accountancy is growing is in the financial analysis arena where a commercially-focussed accountant can bring insight and support. I mentioned payroll above - the accountant's role is not the old financial controller one of implementing the processes and making sure that everyone is being paid correctly and at the right time. That should be taken as a given. The accountant's role is now to take that payroll information and report on resourcing, and offer suggestions to make it, resourcing, more effective. That doesn't mean to save money, it means to be more efficient, which may mean better deployment and improved profitability. Businesses need collaborative support from accountants, and not the consultative advice that traditional accountancy provides. The future's good for accountants and students who can demonstrate an aptitude for business, and to be frank, a whole lot more fun and interesting than the traditional services model of tax planning and auditing.

Yes.Okay - you want more, I suppose.As much as can be said for any profession, the accounting profession is still an important one.  Accountants do not just deal with numbers, and the bits of the role that do are becoming more and more computerised, but accounting also involves a lot of work translating those numbers into something meaningful.  Trying to make sense, and some sort of narrative from numbers.  And more and more, accountants are being called upon to measure more than just the money - because performance is about more than money.  We are the people who can say how well a company is performing; we are also the ones who check to make sure our figures are correct.So accountants have a bright, ever-changing future.  We are not going to be replaced by computers any time soon, as computers cannot do the 'value-add' analysis.  Computers cannot produce the same interpretations based upon experience and a knowledge of all the inputs.  Computers cannot yet tell us what we should be measuring.There is plenty of work for accountants, in a wide range of roles.  As long as we use money, someone will need to keep track of it, tell us how it was used and how it should be used.

Working in the accounting field is still a very employable career. It still holds 1 of the most jobs in the market even until today and I don't see that changing any time in the future unless we manage to find a way to get a robot or software to do it for us.There are also work in different careers like Budget Analysts, Credit Analysts, Tax Examiners and Auditors.Source: http://www.owlguru.com/tools/jobs-with-this-degree/Bottom line: The future is still very bright for accounting careers.

I don't know much about accounting, but any job regardless, growth is inevitable for a world expanding so quickly. Sub-fields, etc., are necessary for any kind of growing complexity, especially what has come of the internet.