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A survey of 251 of the world’s most powerful business people by Ernst & Young, What’s next for the CFO? Where ambition meets reality, shows that while 97 per cent of these C-suite respondents acknowledge that CFOs’ roles have grown broader, nearly one-third believe that CFOs do not have enough understanding of the wider issues their businesses face.

The survey confirms that although the traditional skills of the finance function are still a pre-requisite for successful CFOs, more is required: 88 per cent of respondents state that ‘being good with numbers’ is no longer enough.

Norman Lonergan, global advisory services leader for Ernst & Young, says that CFOs are being pulled in all directions and warns that this is ultimately not sustainable.

He explains that they are being asked to be business partners to their CEOs and commentators to their boards, as well as their more traditional roles as score-keepers of financial performance and custodians of risk management.

Facing these huge demands, CFOs are finding themselves at a crossroads, where they can choose to either limit themselves to technical accounting or focus on more strategic functions.

“If they want to concentrate on their strategic roles they need to streamline their scorekeeping and custodial roles, focus more on integrating financial and non-financial information, and build talented teams to share the workload,” Lonergan adds.

The factors that have contributed most to the CFOs changing role were regulatory and compliance obligations (cited by 43 per cent), increasing expectations of the board and the audit committee (38 per cent) and increasing corporate governance obligations (35 per cent).

There is a gap between where respondents feel CFOs should spend their time and where they actually do — 35 per cent felt that CFOs should dedicate their time to working as a strategic business partner to the CEO, whereas in reality only 26 per cent feel this is where CFOs spend their time.

Respondents say that finance functions collaborate effectively with functions such as tax, treasury and IT, but less well with research and development, marketing, and sales and distribution.

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Related links 

• Ernst & Young
• What’s next for the CFO? Where ambition meets reality