How to Overcome AI Tool Decision Paralysis

AI-powered tax research is having a moment. It seems like every day there’s another headline about what AI can do for tax workflows, how fast it’s evolving, and why your firm needs to act now.

These headlines aren’t wrong. AI-powered tax research just keeps getting more sophisticated and firms are adopting it at a rapid pace. 

Research from Blue J’s own Outlook Report had similar findings:

• 54% of respondents reported using some form of AI to do tax research
• 86% of respondents agreed that AI-powered tax research creates an advantage for firms
• 735% YoY increase in tax questions asked on Blue J from July 2024 and July 2025

Despite all this positive momentum, plenty of tax professionals still feel stuck. With multiple vendors all making the same promises of speed, accuracy, and security, it’s a wonder any of us ever move past the evaluation stage. After subjecting yourself to a blur of vendor demos and seemingly interchangeable feature lists, sticking with your current tech stack can start to feel like the easiest option. 

Why Information Overload Leads to Inaction

No matter how much we might like to think of ourselves as rational, human beings are prone to cognitive biases. When you’re overwhelmed—possibly from all those demos and feature lists— defaulting to one of these biases is an easy way to cut thinking costs. Most of the time, the reason you hold off on choosing a new tool has nothing to do with the tool itself.  And everything to do with the process of choosing one.    

Status Quo Bias

When faced with uncertainty, we tend to stick with what we already know—even if it’s slower or less efficient. In psychology, this phenomenon is called the status quo bias. While leaning on this cognitive bias can free up space for other mental tasks, it can also lead to missed opportunities. 

Accounting has a well-known acronym related to this bias: SALY, or Same As Last Year. It may be rooted in a desire to drive consistency, but defaulting to SALY can also drive stagnancy. When you don’t take the time to reevaluate your tech stack, all the issues caused by that tech can compound year over year.  

Luckily, the behavioral science experts at The Decision Lab have some advice on how to disrupt this bias:

• Increase awareness: This requires weighing your options, giving equal consideration to each. 
• Create space to consider: In a busy firm, it’s easy to put off making a decision until a block of free time magically appears in your calendar (spoiler: it will never happen). To get past this, book blocks of uninterrupted thinking time in your calendar and look to expert-vetted evaluation questions to make the best use of that time. 

Loss Aversion

Humans don’t weigh gains and losses evenly. A potential loss feels more painful than the joy associated with an equivalent gain. This cognitive bias is called loss aversion, and makes us want to hang on tight to what’s known and familiar—including legacy tax research solutions. 

When you’re evaluating AI-powered tax research tools, the promise of saving hours on research doesn’t feel nearly as impactful as the perceived risk of losing credibility or wasting spend. 

But once again, the experts at The Decision Lab have a few strategies for fighting back against this bias: 

• Frame wisely: Pay attention to the benefits you want to achieve, not just the risks you want to avoid. For a benefits-focused framework for evaluating AI-powered tax research, look through this buying guide.

• Use perspective: Take a step back and pressure-test potential decisions. Consider what would be the worst realistic outcome if you moved forward. This helps put the fear in perspective and makes it easier to decide whether the risk is real or just perceived..

Even after reading this blog, these cognitive biases will almost certainly creep in as you’re evaluating AI-powered tax research solutions. After all, you’re only human. But that doesn’t make decision paralysis any less dangerous.

With so many firms having made the move, staying where you are means getting left behind. 

The good news is there’s still time to catch up. With the right comparison tools, you can finally move past the evaluation stage and find the AI-powered tax research solution that works for you. 

Top 7 Factors to Evaluate in AI-Powered Tools

When you’re evaluating solutions that all sound similar, focus your questions on the things that actually change outcomes:

1. Answer quality: You need answers you can trust, validate, and stand behind—not just answers that show up fast.
2. Content: Answer quality depends on content quality. Look for deep, authoritative tax source coverage, curated by people who understand the subject.
3. User experience: If a tool isn’t easy to use, it’s just going to collect dust. Widespread adoption demands a workflow that feels intuitive from day one.
4. Price and value: Look past the per seat licence price. What matters more is the value you get per active user—based on real adoption rates.
5. Security: Make sure the platform is built to handle sensitive tax work safely, with clear standards and safeguards.
6. Speed of execution: Choose a vendor with a proven track record of ongoing product improvement, so your solution stays current and gets more valuable over time.
7. Post-purchase experience: Implementation is only the start. Ongoing support and reliability are what keep your tax research tool useful long-term.

Want to deep-dive into each of these categories? Download your copy of the AI-Powered Tax Research Solutions Buying Guide.

So Long, SALY 

You’ve read the headlines, you’ve watched the demos, and you’ve even memorized the feature lists. But all that information only made you feel more stuck. 

Now, you finally have a tool that can get you past the evaluation stage. Armed with a buying guide, you’re ready to cut through the “claim clutter”, to focus on the features, capabilities, and support that really matter. So you can stop watching from the sidelines and see just what this headline-making technology can do for your firm.