“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.”

I didn’t plan to become a CFO.

It happened gradually — and then all at once. And the hardest part wasn’t the numbers. It was learning how to lead through relationships I hadn’t been trained to build.

Over the next four weeks, I’m sharing everything I wish I’d known earlier — in a series called The Accidental CFO: Executive Relationships How-To Guide.

If this sounds like the journey you’re on — follow along. You’re not alone.

Here is the situation most financial leaders find themselves in 12 to 18 months into a role: you have strong command of the numbers, your team respects you, and you are operationally competent. Yet, you are still being brought into major decisions after the direction has been set. You are still surprised by commitments your peers have already made. You are still spending board prep time defending decisions rather than framing them.

This is not a knowledge problem; it is a relationship architecture problem.

Operational, sales, and strategy leaders are structurally rewarded for momentum. They are expected to push ideas forward, build consensus, and deliver results. Meanwhile, Finance is held accountable for discipline and sustainability. These incentive structures are fundamentally incompatible unless actively managed. Left to itself, this dynamic produces one consistent outcome: peers advance a proposal until they have a preferred option, and then they bring it to Finance for validation.

At that point, the CFO has two bad choices: approve something with embedded risk, or push back and look like an obstructive corporate bouncer. Neither is success.

The root of this issue is simple. Finance gets engaged late not because peers are difficult, but because they have no incentive to engage you early. You have to build the relationship that makes early engagement feel valuable to them, and that relationship is built entirely through your behavior.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to break down how to change the moment in time when Finance enters a conversation—from after a preferred option has hardened, to before the framing has been set.

Have you ever been handed a finalized proposal and told to “just check the numbers”? How did you handle it?

Next up: What to do when a peer relationship is already broken — and how to reset it with a single conversation.

#TheAccidentalCFO #inersec #FinanceLeadership #ExecutiveRelationships #StrategicFinance