Excelling as a New CFO
Introduction
Stepping into the CFO role is both an exciting opportunity and a daunting challenge. New CFOs are expected not only to master all aspects of accounting, finance and treasury but also to guide strategy, manage risk, inspire teams, and foster long-term business value. The transition can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, CFO.University provides a wealth of insight from experienced finance leaders and advisors who have either walked this road or guided CFOs on their journey.
1. Develop a Balanced Skillset: Technical, Business Acumen, and Behavioral
The CFO’s skillset must extend far beyond traditional accounting and finance expertise. Three critical areas standout: technical skills, business acumen, and behavioral skills. If you are kicking off your CFO journey, you ought to be thinking about the some of the same areas of skill that Finance business partners require.
Technical skills aren’t limited to compliance, GAAP and IFRS updates or the monthly close. Instead, they include tools for performance management; for example, Activity Based Costing, Product/Customer Profitability Analysis, Balanced Scorecard, Key Performance Indicators, Forecasting, Financial modelling, data mining and dashboards. These allow CFOs to translate data into insight and action.
Business acumen, meanwhile, ensures finance leaders understand how the organization actually creates value. Quoting Alan Warner “understanding what running a successful business is all about…knowing your customers and how best to meet their needs.”
Finally, behavioral skills—often underestimated—prove essential. We mustn’t be so entrenched in our technical roles, so left-brained, so analytical that the ‘how to’ dominates the ‘how do we?’. Behavioral skills are skills that…
… “can be done well. If they can be done well, they can be done better. And if they can be done better, then there must be ways of learning to do them better.” - Andy Burrows
Lesson: New CFOs must deliberately grow in all three dimensions. Neglecting behavioral and business acumen leaves gaps that no amount of technical mastery can fill.
Adapted from, If You Want To Be A CFO, Develop These Three Skills by Andy Burrows
2. Believe in Yourself—Through Preparation
“Believe in yourself.” sounds simple enough. Confidence, however, doesn’t appear out of thin air. It grows through preparation.
“Preparing to perform a task or role is what builds the confidence in our ability to be successful.” - Steve Rosvold
Preparation requires clarity. The CFO journey as like traveling along “four superhighways—Accounting, Finance, Treasury, and Leadership.” Each comes with arterial “roadways” like governance, forecasting, investment analysis, cash management, and strategic leadership. Exposure across these superhighways allows CFOs to develop the breadth of judgment required to lead.
Be careful not to be distracted by “superhighways” that belong to other functions like HR, IT, or legal. While CFOs interact with these areas, and in many smaller organizations these functions report the CFO, but the success of a CFO lies in their preparation to navigate the four superhighways mentioned above. So, if you are a new CFO, focus first on building credibility in your domain before spreading yourself too thin.
Lesson: Self-belief comes not from bravado but from structured preparation across the CFO’s four superhighways.
Adapted from, What is the First Step on the Road to CFO Success? by CFO.University
3. Build Early Momentum: The First 101 Days
The first 101 days of a CFO’s tenure are pivotal. Although brief, this period establishes credibility with peers, employees, and the board.
For a new CFO, this means setting priorities intentionally. The early months should focus on, building team dynamics, making sure the books are in order, clarifying cash needs, validating forecasts, assessing the finance team’s capabilities, and establishing open communication with business partners. CFOs who fail to use this time wisely risk losing influence before they’ve barely begun.
Momentum also requires visibility. By communicating early wins—streamlined reporting, sharper forecasting, or improved treasury controls—CFOs demonstrate their value quickly. These efforts provide confidence to stakeholders and create breathing room to pursue longer-term strategic initiatives.
Lesson: Treat the first 101 days as a launchpad. Quick wins, visible improvements, and clear priorities establish credibility and influence.
Adapted from, The First 101 Days of a Successful CFO by CFO.University
“It includes a tool to help you assess where your energy needs to be focused.” - CFO.University
4. Balance Past, Present, and Future Roles
By dividing the CFO role into timeframes we can create a useful framework for understanding CFO responsibilities.
Many CFOs remain bogged down in the past and present. Yet, the future role is growing in importance:
“The CFO has been specifically chartered with the responsibility for identifying, from a financial perspective, where the organization is performing well along with identifying areas where enhancements are required.” – Brian Higgins
This tri-temporal lens helps new CFOs manage expectations. They must be guardians of history, stewards of operations, and strategists for the future, all at the same time. Balancing these requires judgment about where to spend precious time and energy.
Lesson: Excellence as a CFO means managing past, present, and future simultaneously—without letting one timeframe dominate at the expense of the others.
Adapted from The Roles of the CFO – Past, Present and Future, by Brian Higgins
5. Anchor Growth in the Four Pillars of CFO Success
CFO.University helps you identify which of the Four Pillars of CFO Success - Accounting, Finance, Treasury, and Leadership – represent your strengths to be leveraged and opportunities to be developed.
As highlighted in section 2 above, each pillar includes competencies critical to success. For instance, Accounting provides governance, recording, and reporting, the foundation on which the other three pillars of the Chief Financial officer role are built. Finance extends this foundation to budgeting, forecasting, and investment analysis. Treasury ensures cash is managed effectively, liquidity is top of mind and risk management strategies are conceived and implemented. Leadership inspires and guides teams in each of the other pillars through self-awareness, team building, and culture.
The genius of the Four Pillars framework is that it balances technical and behavioral domains. Leadership, often neglected in technical training, is positioned as the elixir which makes the other Pillars effective. This reminds new CFOs that your value lies not just in managing numbers but also in motivating people.
Lesson: The Four Pillars provide a holistic framework for development. A strong CFO is balanced across all four, not just one.
Adapted from Professional Development Tool: The CFO Readiness Assessment, by CFO.University
6. Use Assessments to Focus Development
The CFO Readiness Assessment™ is more than a diagnostic—it’s a growth roadmap…
…“to determine where your investment in CFO skill development will have the highest payback…to receive a personalized report that will act as a road map for your professional growth journey.” - CFO.University
For a new CFO, the assessment provides clarity amid competing demands. It identifies which pillar or competency requires the most urgent attention, turning vague development goals into concrete steps. The efficiency is striking: “It takes only 10 minutes to complete… the results are easy to interpret.”
By adopting such tools early in their tenure, new CFOs demonstrate humility and a willingness to learn. More importantly, they avoid wasting time on generic development paths, instead investing energy where it yields the highest return.
Use the CFO Readiness Assessment to strengthen each of your domains.
Lesson: Self-awareness tools like the CFO Readiness Assessment ensure targeted, high-ROI growth for new finance leaders.
Adapted from The CFO Readiness Assessment, by CFO.University
And the Short Form AFT (Accounting, Finance, Treasury) Assessment by CFO.University
7. Lead with Vision and Influence
Leadership, the final pillar, warrants special emphasis.
“Leadership is the act of inspiring others to engage in achieving a goal.” - Steve Rosvold
It begins with self-awareness, extends to team building, and culminates in strategic leadership that rallies people behind a vision. Authority alone does not equal leadership. When leadership skills are not developed this is one of the issues the hinders growth,
“…when [finance leaders] get to a senior level and they don’t have these skills, they get told they don’t have enough gravitas/impact or they are not good at building cross-functional relationship and influence.” Talita Ferreira
For new CFOs, this is sobering. Technical mastery and financial insight will open the door, but long-term success depends on influence, communication, and the ability to inspire trust. CFOs who cultivate this will be seen not just as number-crunchers, but as indispensable strategic leaders.
Lesson: True leadership for CFOs means moving beyond authority to influence—communicating vision, building trust, and inspiring followership.
Adapted from CFO Talk: The Future of Finance: The Keys to Influence, with Andy Burrows
8. Embrace the Future: Digital, Data, Analytics, and AI (D2A2)
One of the most pressing frontiers for CFOs is the integration of Digital, Data, Analytics, and AI (D2A2) into the finance function.
“Strap on your seatbelts as we blast off into the future of digital, data, analytics, and AI as designed by five global experts whose research is our door to tomorrow.” – Steve Rosvold
D2A2 is not optional for CFOs. It is becoming a board-level topic.
It has to be [on the agenda] every meeting today… data is an asset only if you know how to use it. If you don’t know how to use it, it becomes a liability, which will be very expensive.” - Dr. Sumi Singh
Insights from the 2025 D2A2 Insights – Predictions and Prescriptions revent earlier this yea revealed three urgent imperatives for CFOs:
1. Data Quality and Governance Drive AI Success. The new “AI 2.0 era” where mapping, modeling, and measuring data are central.
“Without data quality, no AI model can be substituted,” - Dr. Arun Marar
Robust governance and stewardship practices must be in place to keep the team moving
safely in the same direction.
“The brakes in your car are not meant to slow you down… they are meant to protect you so you can go faster. . Data governance is the same way.” – Dr. Prashanth Southekal
2. AI Integration Will Be Gradual but Strategic. Don’t chase the hype.
“Agentic AI will not instantly boost business productivity… if you have not mastered the fundamentals and have not dialed in your use cases, agentic AI will not help you. It will make things worse.” - Tobias Zwingmann
The message for CFOs: build maturity in increments, starting with augmentation use cases before automation.
3. ROI Must Be Measured Relentlessly. The CFO’s is a unique role in D2A2 as represented by this comment.
“AI initiatives will be even more strongly evaluated against their return on investment… you have to think in a recurring mindset.” - Tobias Zwingmann
CFOs must ensure that AI adoption is aligned with business outcomes, whether cost reduction, revenue growth, or risk mitigation.
For finance leaders, the D2A2 wave requires balancing optimism with discipline with agility being the survival skill:
“The only thing that will change consistently from now on is the rate of change… companies must learn to iterate fast and adapt.” – Dr. Bala Balasubramanian
Lesson: CFOs must lead in D2A2 adoption, ensuring governance, measured investment, and agility. By doing so, they position finance not only as stewards of capital but also as enablers of digital intelligence.
Adapted from CFO Talk: D2A2 (Digital, Data, Analytics and AI) 2025 Insights - Predictions and Prescriptions with the D2A2 thought leaders quoted above.
Conclusion
The CFO role today is multidimensional, requiring mastery across technical, business, and leadership domains. From Andy Burrows’ call to balance skill development, to Brian Higgins’ framework of past, present, and future, to Steve Rosvold’s reminder that belief grows from preparation, and CFO.University’s Four Pillars framework, the lessons converge on a clear message: successful CFOs are both technicians and leaders, strategists and partners, guardians and visionaries.
For new CFOs, the path may seem daunting. But by focusing on these themes; building balanced skills, preparing deliberately, gaining early momentum, balancing timeframes, modernizing costing, strengthening the Four Pillars, using assessments, and leading with influence, you can not only survive but excel in the role.
“Having enough exposure to and training in each of these Superhighways is what prepares a business leader to get behind the wheel of the CFO role and navigate along the CFO journey.” – Steve Rosvold
With the right mindset, training, exposure and tools, new CFOs can chart a path of confidence and credibility that has a lasting impact.
Thanks to Andrew Burrows , Brian Higgins , Prashanth H Southekal, PhD, MBA, ICD.D , Sumi Singh, PhD. , Arun Marar, Ph.D. , Tobias Zwingmann and V. “Bala” Balasubramanian, PhD, MBA for sharing their expertise with the CFO.University community.
Identify your path to CFO success by taking our CFO Readiness Assessmentᵀᴹ.
Become a Member today and get 30% off on-demand courses and tools!
For the most up to date and relevant accounting, finance, treasury and leadership headlines all in one place subscribe to The Balanced Digest.
Follow us on Linkedin!
