Head to head
Deloitte vs EY
Named side by side in 4 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms questions. Deloitte came out ahead on 1; on 3 the sample cannot tell them apart.
Over 4 fractional CFO and outsourced accounting firms questions measured by The Shortlist Report over 717 AI responses, Deloitte was named more often than EY on 1 of them, EY on 0, and the sample could not separate them on the remaining 3.
How Deloitte and EY differ
This data does not establish which firm is better. Deloitte’s strongest result relative to EY was on “Which fractional CFOs help prepare a company for fundraising?” (16.2% versus 13.8%), while EY’s strongest result relative to Deloitte was on “Which outsourced firms handle business tax and compliance?” (21.1% versus 22.3%).
Those are the clearest differences in the shared sample. They measure which firm AI assistants surfaced more often for each buyer question, not service quality or client results.
Question by question
| Question | Deloitte | EY | Ahead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Which outsourced firms handle business tax and compliance?175 responses | 22.3% | 21.1% | Same tier — too close to call |
| Who provides interim finance leadership at short notice?157 responses | 21.7% | 19.1% | Same tier — too close to call |
| Which fractional CFOs help prepare a company for fundraising?210 responses | 16.2% | 13.8% | Deloitte |
| Who manages cap tables, equity administration and 409A valuations?175 responses | 15.4% | 13.7% | Same tier — too close to call |
How to read this
Share is the percentage of sampled ChatGPT responses to a question that named the firm at all — a measure of visibility, not of the work. A capable firm little has been written about will score low, which is a fact about how often it gets named and not a verdict on whether to hire it.
"Too close to call" is a result, not a gap in the data. Firms are grouped into tiers holding every firm the sample cannot statistically separate from that tier's leader, so two firms in one tier are reported as level however their percentages happen to fall. On 3 of these 4 questions that is what the measurement supports, and saying otherwise would be inventing precision.
Nothing here is our judgement of who is good. It is a count of who gets named. Both firms are measured over the same questions and the same 717 responses, so neither is being scored on a sample the other did not face.
The full picture on each
- Everything measured about DeloitteEnterprise-scale SAP, Oracle, and Workday implementations for Fortune 500 companies and regulated industries.
- Everything measured about EYImplements SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft ERPs for global organizations; provides transformation advisory and managed services.