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More risk, less clarity: what 530 CFOs say
Our H1 Finance Leaders Barometer, spanning CFOs across markets and sectors, reveals:
- 85% agree workload and skills gaps are driving unsustainable strain in their finance function
- 79% say ownership of key risks is unclear across their business
- 1 in 5 are not confident in their business' current ability to manage geopolitical volatility impacts.
There is a version of the CFO role that exists on paper. It aligns neatly with your training, and it’s crystal-clear on the org chart: a steward of financial integrity and a strategic partner to the business. Analytical, always informed, and supported by strong governance and clear lines of accountability.
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Then there’s reality. That’s where an unspoken logic takes hold: Finance touches everything, so Finance owns everything. Where 85% of CFOs say they’re operating under unsustainable strain. Where 79% aren’t clear who owns key business risks.
The gap might have been manageable before, just about held together by your experience, intuition, and sheer force of will.
But the speed and scale of decisions is changing. Geopolitical shifts may be turning supply chain choices into liabilities overnight. Your Board wants daily visibility on cash. HR needs answers on reward structures and headcount trade-offs, now. Decisions that once unfolded over quarters now land in days... and all roads seem to lead to Finance.
There are four areas to reflect on to test what risk truly sits with you, where boundaries might have blurred, and what needs to be reset before regret follows.
Are you putting plasters on a broken model?
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On paper |
In reality |
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The finance function is aligned to the business and its risk profile. Capability, capacity and decision rights are clear. With a fully functioning engine room behind you, your judgement is needed only sparingly, reserved for the moments that matter most. You have confidence that risks will be flagged at the right time. |
Capability gaps are opening in the highest‑risk areas. Extra reviews get layered on instead of fixing controls or skills gaps, and judgement becomes constant rather than selective. The model only works because you stay close enough to intervene. |
Some of the new risks sitting with you will stay there. The expanding expectations on Finance can't be entirely escaped.
However, the response we see to this is too often surface level: add one or two new roles, add another review layer, bolt on another temporary fix. And it just about holds everything together... as long you stay close enough to every risk that could possibly escalate.
When is the last time you asked yourself:
- If you were building your finance function from scratch today for the environment that you’re now in, how would it look?
- Which decisions are you currently too close to for someone at your level, and what would need to change for that not to be true?
- If you’re in the weeds – and if even more weeds are on the way – are you playing the role that you yourself should be playing?
Few CFOs have space to think a year ahead. Without deliberate recalibration, how confident are you that you have the capabilities and controls to catch emerging risks as they grow... or are you relying on yourself as the key control?
Two paths forward:
Option A: Step back and redesign the model
For some, it will be clear that the operating model itself no longer fits today’s environment, let alone being ready for tomorrow. There needs to be a fundamental review of how Finance is structured, controlled and resourced; rebuilding capability in the highest risk areas, strengthening controls at source, and resetting review processes so senior judgement can be applied more selectively. Vitally, there also needs to be a focus on the CFO role itself – making it manageable.
The trade‑off is disruption and focus. This requires time and attention that may be tough to find, but it creates a model that scales without relying on constant intervention.
Option B: Stabilise, intervene... and buy time
For some, the same reflection leads to a different call. The model may be imperfect -but trying to rebuild it entirely right now is unfeasible and could introduce more risk than it removes. Regulatory deadlines or simple capacity constraints mean the priority is holding the line.
On this path, there’s a need to lean harder on proximity: tighter senior oversight, clearer escalation routes and more direct involvement where it matters most. But…. put a timeline on how long you will rely on this “sticky plaster” solution, or it will become the immovable status quo.
Feel uncomfortably familiar?
You signed it. Can you stand behind it?
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On paper |
In reality |
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Sign statutory and regulatory documents on behalf of the business, relying on established controls and shared governance structures -with all fellow statutory directors taking due heed of their responsibilities.
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Sign an expanding perimeter of documents opening you up to reputational and sometimes legal exposure – ESG disclosures, tax transparency statements, supply chain certifications, Senior Accounting Officer – that sit well beyond traditional finance terrain, relying on imperfect data, and controls you didn’t build and haven’t verified. |
What began as responsibility for financial reporting has expanded into areas you don’t own, weren’t trained in, and controls you haven’t personally verified.
When is the last time you assessed how much personal liability you are really taking on – and how rarely that has been matched by growth in your ability to confidently stand behind what you’re signing?
CSRD requires your certification of sustainability data created by teams that didn’t even exist five years ago. Pillar Two demands sign-off on tax positions of extreme complexity across entities that may span dozens of territories. You're likely to be the designated signatories for annual Modern Slavery Act statements. In many businesses, this significant expansion of liability was never explicitly discussed at Board level.
If a disclosure were found tomorrow to be materially inaccurate, the question wouldn’t be whether you can show that someone told you the processes they had in place were adequate. Processes won’t carry the liability; you will.
Reset what you’re signing
List every document you have signed in the past 12 months that carries personal legal liability. For each, ask yourself:
- When shifting regulations expanded your signing obligations (ESG, CSRD, Pillar Two, FPPP), did you put formal processes in place to have access to the timely insight you night to do so? If so, when were they last reviewed?
- Where your signature relies on controls owned by another function - IT, supply chain, sustainability – when is the last time you formally reviewed those controls, rather than accepting outputs by convention?
For each, are you the best person to be signatory? You may need a Board-level conversation to reassess ownership.
Two paths forward:
Option A: Retain signature, rebuild assurance
Some CFOs will need to accept the full expanded scope but deliberately slow the machine down - investing in verification, formalising second‑line review, and tightening controls across non‑finance areas. There’s a cost to this: time, capital, and potentially friction as functions adjust to higher scrutiny – but your confidence in what you’re signing is significantly increased.
Option B: Narrow the scope
Others may need to reset the line entirely, pushing formal signoff for certain areas back to functional owners or making shared ownership more explicit. That means documented reliance on other function's controls, and clear accountability for the data and judgements that sit behind each disclosure. In other words, you stop being the C-suite's sole absorber of risk.
This option requires clear Board-level backing and business-wide buy-in, which many CFOs recognise is not immediately available.
Are you owning the risk, or only its aftermath?
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On paper |
In reality |
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Your team translates operational and external risks into financial implications, with risk remaining owned – or at least Co-owned – by the originating function. |
You model risks with imperfect and slow inputs, then absorb accountability for the outcomes. Finance become the default owner when ownership at source is unclear, too often filling the vacuum. |
Finance models risk with imperfect inputs, then absorbs accountability when outcomes disappoint. When ownership is unclear, it often defaults to Finance. Sometimes, even if ownership is clear, Finance fills the void created by a lack of proactivity by the actual owner.
Every business decision and every external shock, from FX volatility to tech investments, has potential financial implications which the CFO is expected to articulate. But modelling impact is not the same as owning the outcome.
When that isn’t made explicit in writing, scrutiny often lands on the numbers six months later. Not on the assumptions behind them, and not on the imperfect data delivered late by other parts of the business. The model is concrete and easy to interrogate, while everything upstream of it is not.
The only way to break this pattern is to document, clearly and early, which risks Finance owns, where it advises, and what assumptions have been made.
Two paths forward:
Option A: Finance as translator, not owner
In this stance, CFOs work more proactively to document explicitly where risks originate and ensure ownership remains with the most appropriate party.
Finance models the impact, but accountability does not pass to Finance by default – it is allocated appropriately, visibly, and with consensus. This demands stronger governance and can lead to tough conversations but alleviates some of the pressure on Finance while ensuring that risks (and opportunities) are owned by the most appropriate parties.
Option B: Finance as the owner - early
In some organisations, especially scaling ones without dedicated sustainability or other specialist functions, the conclusion may be that Finance does currently need to "own” risk almost entirely - modelling it, explaining it, and ultimately defending the outcome.
This concentrates pressure on Finance – but comes with the upside of clarity. You know where you stand, and other functions know they’re expected to come to you early. Just remember that you will still be asking colleagues, Directors, and the Board to play their role – they cannot abnegate all responsibility.
If neither path feels feasible because of relationship gaps and tensions, it reflects a deeper concern: a lack of trust required for real decisions to happen.
Are you being held at arm's length?
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On paper |
In reality |
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Risk is identified and mitigated collectively across the C‑suite, with financial, tax and cash implications embedded early in decision-making to minimise risk. |
Cross-functional relationships are weak, with decisions often made quickly and in silos. The impacts surface late once options have narrowed, and risk often concentrates, disproportionately, with the CFO. |
Only 22% percent of CIOs say they meet their CFO regularly outside major planning cycles. Which means in nearly four out of five organisations, Finance only enters the room once the direction is already set. The gap matters more than ever in today's environment as decisions are made at speed with imperfect information.
The HR team has already begun reshaping reward structures before the tax exposure is known. The supply chain function has already committed to the new routing before anyone's modelled the working capital impact.
Every option explored in this insight is easier to execute when the CFO has real, working relationships with the Board and C-suite. When Finance isn’t embedded early, the risks often surface only once choices have already narrowed.
Two paths forward:
Option A: Sticking Finance into the process
Some CFOs’ answer will be to embed Finance more deliberately earlier in decision making, establishing more regular, informal check-ins with C-‑suite peers and a doubling down on business partnering.
The benefit is stronger influence and openness. Challenges are surfaced while choices are still flexible, assumptions can be challenged in real time, and risk is diffused before it crystallises. You don’t need to rely on others coming to you because Finance is inexorably involved anyway.
Option B: Create a culture where the business comes to you
Other CFOs may focus less on pushing Finance in, and more on encouraging the business towards Finance. The emphasis is on expectation setting: making it culturally understood that meaningful decisions come to Finance early; not for approval, but for perspective. Here, collaboration is driven less by formalised check-ins, and more by habit and real trust. Teams know that involving Finance early strengthens decisions rather than slows them down.
This isn’t about fixing everything today. Knowing what needs to change is not the same as having the relational capital, influence or capacity to change it immediately. Many of the dynamics we see CFOs operate within - and much of the risk Finance carries - are long‑established, shaped by history, structures and expectations that won’t shift easily.
What is within your control is stepping back to make deliberate choices: where intervention or redesign is genuinely required, and where, in the short and longer term, Finance stops quietly absorbing risk that should be owned more visibly and collectively. Without that conscious recalibration, the load does not level out. It keeps growing.
