Could you look beyond the finance team for your next CFO?

Look at the CFOs for most major com­pa­nies and you’ll see a group of peo­ple with sim­i­lar back­grounds, usu­al­ly built on sol­id accoun­tan­cy and finance expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, the chang­ing nature of the job has opened the door to a wider range of tal­ent. 

The chal­lenges fac­ing busi­ness­es in the future of work are turn­ing the CFO posi­tion into an increas­ing­ly strate­gic role. Yes, book­keep­ing, finan­cial report­ing and com­pli­ance are still impor­tant, but these tasks are being del­e­gat­ed down the chain. 

Instead, CFOs are focus­ing on influ­enc­ing busi­ness strat­e­gy and out­comes, lead­ing teams and nav­i­gat­ing com­plex data and analy­sis. The era of the pure num­ber crunch­er is com­ing to an end, with finance lead­ers now com­ing from back­grounds as diverse as mar­ket­ing, sci­ence and phar­ma­col­o­gy.

McK­in­sey & Co’s lat­est glob­al sur­vey on the role of the CFO shows how its remit is evolv­ing. Between 2016 and 2021, the per­cent­age of CFOs respon­si­ble for investor rela­tions grew from 44% to 64%. It was a sim­i­lar sto­ry in post-merg­er inte­gra­tions (from 32% to 43%), pro­cure­ment (34% to 42%) and dig­i­tal oper­a­tions (9% to 31%). 

Changing expectations

In this con­text, it’s unsur­pris­ing that the pro­file of CFOs at for­ward-look­ing organ­i­sa­tions is evolv­ing. But what ben­e­fits can such expe­ri­ence bring? 

Sab­ri­na Cas­tiglione is CFO at infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty soft­ware provider Tess­ian. Her aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground is in chem­istry. Despite five years’ expe­ri­ence as an actu­ary, she believes a tra­di­tion­al accoun­tan­cy back­ground isn’t the most impor­tant thing for her role. 

“A mod­ern finance func­tion is split into two arms. One is busi­ness as usu­al, look­ing back­wards at com­pli­ance and reg­u­la­tion,” she explains. “As a CFO, once you have a good team run­ning that, that isn’t where your time is spent. It’s on the finan­cial analy­sis and plan­ning side, where you’re opti­mis­ing for busi­ness out­comes.” 

Cas­tiglione came to Tess­ian in its infan­cy, becom­ing the organisation’s sev­enth hire. She joined as chief of staff, grow­ing to be respon­si­ble for finance, legal, peo­ple, tal­ent, infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty and IT. As the organ­i­sa­tion devel­oped, she became increas­ing­ly involved in finan­cial mod­el­ling and fundrais­ing, with her role for­malised as CFO in 2018. It was only then that she took her accoun­tan­cy exams. 

Relationships and roles

Cas­tiglione believes the chal­lenges faced by star­tups and scale­ups mean their CFOs need to be more oper­a­tional­ly mind­ed than those in tra­di­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. 

“Star­tups move so fast that even quar­ter­ly plans can be ripped up as things change so quick­ly. Hav­ing a CFO who is aware of the big pic­ture is key, espe­cial­ly for ven­ture cap­i­tal-backed busi­ness­es where the con­straint is time, not mon­ey. It’s about under­stand­ing the dri­vers and block­ers to mak­ing the busi­ness go faster,” she says. 

Like oth­er C‑suite roles, this requires CFOs to effec­tive­ly build rela­tion­ships across an organ­i­sa­tion. Emo­tion­al intel­li­gence is impor­tant, as is the abil­i­ty to under­stand the spe­cif­ic oper­at­ing mod­el of your com­pa­ny.

“If as CFO you are spend­ing all your time on account­ing rather than with the sales team, peo­ple team and tech team, your focus is wrong. Account­ing is impor­tant, but it’s about influ­enc­ing busi­ness out­comes, and that requires devel­op­ing deep rela­tion­ships with oth­er depart­ments,” says Cas­tiglione. 

New skills 

Cather­ine Bir­kett is at the oth­er end of the expe­ri­ence scale. She spent 14 years as CFO of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions busi­ness Inter­oute, grow­ing rev­enue to £750m and man­ag­ing the company’s even­tu­al acqui­si­tion by GTT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in 2018 for $2.3bn. She is now CFO at fin­tech uni­corn GoCard­less, a recur­ring pay­ments spe­cial­ist.

Like Cas­tiglione, she thinks the chang­ing require­ments of the CFO role mean we’ll increas­ing­ly see can­di­dates from oth­er areas take the top role, par­tic­u­lar­ly at high-growth busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, she believes it will take time for them to emerge. 

“The mod­ern CFO skill set is about get­ting a founder or CEO to believe you’re not going to inhib­it growth, that you’re going to sup­port the busi­ness in grow­ing its top line, that you get the com­mer­cial side and that you’re strate­gic, all while still hav­ing that sol­id account­ing basis,” says Bir­kett. “The prob­lem is that there aren’t mass­es of can­di­dates like that out there. In 10 years’ time there will be, but right now they’re com­ing through the ranks,” she adds. 

Bir­kett was a pio­neer of the busi­ness-mind­ed finance leader, hav­ing been pro­mot­ed aged just 31 to CFO at Inter­oute with a focus on strat­e­gy and busi­ness devel­op­ment. Her back­ground was five years at KPMG in train­ing and trans­ac­tion ser­vices, fol­lowed by four years as head of finan­cial plan­ning and analy­sis at Inter­oute. 

She admits to a lack of expe­ri­ence in audit and the finan­cial con­troller side of finance. How­ev­er, she says that “hir­ing good peo­ple” to deal with the account­ing side was cru­cial to over­com­ing ear­ly dif­fi­cul­ties. “It was quite unusu­al to come at the role from that side at the time and in ret­ro­spect I had nowhere near enough expe­ri­ence to do the job. I was thrown in at the deep end and my first job was to raise some mon­ey to stop us going bank­rupt,” she smiles. 

Big data demands

Birkett’s career with Inter­oute cov­ered the dot-com bub­ble, 2008 finan­cial cri­sis and an even­tu­al acqui­si­tion, before she took her sec­ond exec­u­tive role at GoCard­less in 2019. These expe­ri­ences have proved invalu­able to help­ing the pay­ment provider nav­i­gate through the pan­dem­ic. 

“I went from some­one who at 31 was the most inex­pe­ri­enced mem­ber of the C‑suite – and con­tin­ued being so for most of my time there – to com­ing to GoCard­less and being the expe­ri­enced one,” Bir­kett says. “I’ve lived through real step changes in our world and know how you need to adapt to chaos, which has been a mas­sive plus to the busi­ness.” 

Does she think future CFOs will move even fur­ther away from the fig­ures, focus­ing more on organ­i­sa­tion­al design and oper­a­tional man­age­ment? Not with big data on the hori­zon. 

“As a CFO of any busi­ness, small or large, hav­ing that strate­gic side is super impor­tant. But the thing that is going to be increas­ing­ly impor­tant is analysing and under­stand­ing data. Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to deal with data is going to become mas­sive­ly impor­tant, so a math­e­mat­i­cal or numer­i­cal back­ground will always be need­ed.”