Reporting and compliance – when they’re solid, so are your decisions

This is one of nine insights in our guide to navigating your first 100 days as a new CFO. Discover more insights here.

Before you can make any changes, you need to understand how the numbers are created, how reliable they are, how they’re consumed, and whether the fundamentals can withstand pressure.

Financial reporting

In your first 100 days as a new CFO, you will need to understand the financial reporting strategy, the processes and the people behind them. That means checking in with your team on roles and responsibilities, diving into the major reports, and understanding the KPIs that are currently being used to define financial fitness today. 

1. The people behind the processes

Before you make your own assessment, let your team present to you in their own words to understand the logic, pressures, assumptions and capabilities that shape your financial reporting strategy and processes today. This also signals trust from day one.

As one experienced CFO put it: “You could spend a couple of weeks turning the pages on every balance sheet reconciliation, but what does that signal to your team? They’re there for a reason, and they were working on the balance sheet before I came along – so when I started, I let them present it to me in their format first, and then I asked questions.”  

2. Aligning reporting with reality

CEOs, the Board, investors, and operational leaders all have different agendas. A CFO who succeeds early is the one who understands: 

• What regulators expect and where your obligations sit 
• What the CEO needs to steer the business
• What the Board and investors are interested in
• What frontline teams need to stay operationally sharp 

Mismatches here are common and lead to noise, distrust, and strategic drift. 

Once you understand stakeholder expectations and the true state of your reporting capabilities, you can build a roadmap of what needs fixing now, what needs redesigning, and what can evolve over time.

3. Identify what needs to change and why

Once you’ve seen the numbers up close, heard from your team and understood what stakeholders want to see, the picture becomes clearer. You’ll know whether the numbers can be trusted, what's slowing things down, and whether expectations are being met or quietly falling short.

This will allow you to define the improvements that actually matter; not surface-level fixes, but areas that will elevate Finance and influence pace, accuracy and strategic clarity.

Ensuring regulatory compliance 

One of your core responsibilities will be putting in place the right processes and controls to ensure all compliance obligations are met. The real question is: how do you make that early in your role, before issues arise?

Check in with your team

Discuss with your team how compliance already features in their daily work and encourage open communication to address any concerns or issues.   

Ensure you have the right protocols in place, and nothing is missed because of an oversight or lack of clarity over who owns what. While financial statements are an obvious item, others that you may need to check include gender pay gap reporting, payment practice and performance, covenant reporting, senior accounting officer, and ESG items.

Engage with external auditors

In your first months in your role, you may want to ask to be introduced to your external auditors to understand their plans and discuss concerns regarding upcoming regulatory reporting changes and what they could mean for your business.

...and internal auditors (where you have them)

Establishing trust early on ensure an open line of communication as soon as any concerns around internal controls and risk management emerge.

This is a two-way street. For internal auditors to provide robust challenge, value-added insights and independent assurance, they need to know they will be kept in the loop about any changes to the strategic direction of the business.

Introduce yourself to regulatory bodies

To set yourself up for success in an ever-evolving regulatory landscape, take time early on to meet with the relevant regulatory bodies: introduce yourself and request guidance and clarification on any unclear or ambiguous regulatory requirements.

Once you’ve identified any areas of high compliance risk through this stage, you can start to build a priority list to tackle them, depending on your available resources, and the wider businesses strategy.

What about tax compliance?

The modern tax environment is too dynamic, too visible and too risky to treat as an afterthought.

If your organisation has a Head of Tax/in-house tax function, you’ll need to meet with them to understand their remit, noting that some areas of tax may be managed elsewhere by the business. For example, operational taxes such as NIC may be the responsibility of the Head of HR. If you don't have an in-house tax function, make it a priority to meet with your tax adviser early in your tenure.

The objective in either case will be to understand:

• the tax compliance strategy
• the tax calendar
• tax audit cycles
• any areas of non-compliance or potential risk in existing processes
• any potential gaps in coverage.

This should help you assess if the in-house team has access to the necessary tools and resources to fulfil obligations, or if there are gaps that need to be filled.

If you don’t have a Head of Tax, be clear on how you’re going to keep yourself consistently informed and advised on tax, noting it may be necessary to understand obligations in jurisdictions other than the one in which you are based.