CFO Dive published an opinion column on July 28, 2026 by Kevin Smith, a partner at Milwaukee-based advisory firm Wipfli and national leader of its technology and innovation practice, setting out five questions finance leaders should ask before approving further AI spending. The questions cover whether the workflow being optimized will still exist in three years, the full cost of ownership beyond software subscriptions (implementation, integration, training, governance, data preparation and ongoing oversight), whether AI adoption is creating vendor concentration risk as pricing and roadmaps shift, why cybersecurity and data governance belong in the initial investment case rather than later, and whether faster deployment actually confers advantage. Smith argues the first wave of adoption was experimentation and the next phase will be defined by investment discipline.