Why people trust Excel more than AI

Every large company runs on spreadsheets. Not officially — the official system is the ERP, the CRM, the data platform. But the number the board sees on Monday morning came out of a workbook someone maintains on their laptop.

Studies of operational spreadsheets find errors in the majority of them. Everyone in finance knows this. And yet the same people who tolerate a broken VLOOKUP will refuse a model that is right 95% of the time.

The error you own is not the same as the error you receive

An Excel mistake is mine. I built the sheet, I can open it, I can trace the cell. When it is wrong I know why, and I can fix it before lunch. An AI mistake arrives from somewhere I cannot see, with a confidence I did not authorise.

The reluctance is not about accuracy. It is about accountability. People adopt tools they can explain to their manager when the number is wrong.

What actually moves adoption

Three things, in order: show the working, keep the human on the signature, and start where the spreadsheet already hurts. Never start where it works.