Our latest research reveals a clear gap: only 26% of CFOs believe financial and tax factors are fully embedded in strategic decision-making across their business. And collaboration is limited, with only 22% of CIOs and 34% of CPOs saying they meet regularly with their CFO outside of major initiatives or planning cycles. 

In a world of digital disruption, regulatory pressure, and geopolitical uncertainty, leadership teams need to address the human dynamics that influence speed, clarity, cohesion and foresight. Yet many organisations are held back by functional designs misaligned with strategic priorities, and by competing priorities and packed agendas that lack a shared sense of direction. It’s no surprise that 27% of CEOs admit they are struggling to manage C-suite tensions productively.

Most effective CFOs won’t just manage the numbers – they'll bridge divides, surface constructive challenge and create the space and insights needed to build strategic capacity across the business.  

In this guide, we dive into the data and share practical frameworks to help you to break silos, build trust, and translate the natural tensions into strategic capacity.  

Inside the numbers: what 800 business leaders tell us

Our latest survey of 800 senior leaders, split equally across CFOs, CEOs, CIOs and CPOs, uncovers valuable insights into the perceptions and influence of CFOs and the Finance function.  

About the survey: Participants were evenly split across five sectors: consumer, business services, financial services, public sector, and TMT. Company turnover ranged from £50m to £5b, with 50% representing firms in the £1b–£5b bracket. Responses were captured anonymously.   

Finance on the sidelines

  • When asked how embedded financial and tax factors are in strategic decision-making across their business, only 26% of CFOs say it is 'fully embedded'.
  • Even among businesses with over £1 billion in revenue – where more mature business partnering might be expected – this figure drops to 23%.
  • When finance isn’t integrated into decision-making, choices risk being made without the rigour, foresight, and informed trade-offs needed to drive value. 

Perception versus potential

We asked CFOs how they believe their CEO perceives them, and CEOs how they perceive their CFO, across five profiles: 

  • Strategic partner (Trusted advisor that helps shape and facilitate enterprise direction and support functions to deliver their goals)
  • The fixer (Brought in at late notice to solve problems and manage crises)
  • The translator (Lead in bridging the gap between data and decision-making)
  • Operational steward (Primarily seen as the controller of budgets and risk)
  • The outsider (Not fully integrated into broader strategic conversations)

35% of CEOs describe their CFO as 'the outsider' or 'fixer' – reactive roles peripheral to long-term strategy. 31% of CFOs agree. In many businesses, the CFO role is still viewed through a narrow lens that undervalues their skillsets, internal and external network and potential. Unlocking that value demands more than technical excellence; it requires a shift in perception. CFOs must actively signal a change in posture and presence.


 

Collaboration is in short supply

  • Only 22% of CIOs and 34% of CPOs meet regularly with their CFO outside major initiatives or planning cycles. By extension, just 28% of CIOs and 23% of CPOs see their CFO as a 'strategic partner' in enabling digital or people strategic priorities.
  • When asked what change their CFO could make to enable people and digital strategies to deliver greater value, their top request wasn’t for Finance to deliver more insight; it was for CFOs to develop deeper understanding of people and technology’s strategic impact.
  • This signals a missed opportunity. Without regular engagement, CFOs risk being sidelined from the very conversations where their insight could unlock value, shape transformation, and strengthen enterprise-wide alignment.

 

Shared vision, stalled execution?

We asked both CFOs and CEOs how time and resources are allocated across the three horizons:

  • Horizon 1: Business protection and short-term performance
  • Horizon 2: Scaling initiatives and emerging opportunities
  • Horizon 3: Innovation, transformation, and long-term growth  

Both agree that nearly 60% of investment is focused beyond the next 12 months. That's a positive sign of forward-looking ambition.

Yet both cite two top tensions slowing effective C-suite decision-making: 

  • Lack of clarity over strategic direction
  • Ambiguity around decision ownership 

This creates a paradox: businesses are investing in the future without the cohesion, clarity, and leadership alignment needed to chart the course. CFOs are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap – bringing sharper foresight, clearer insights, and stronger alignment to decisions. 

How to lead through tension 

Sarah Bell, Head of Governance and Board Effectiveness

You have likely heard of Psychologist Bruce Tuckman’s ‘Forming–Storming–Norming–Performing’ framework, which offers a useful lens to reflect on how individuals interact in group dynamics.

This is especially relevant in today’s C-suite, where both CEOs and CFOs cite ambiguity over decision-making and lack of strategic direction as key tensions slowing progress. 

That ambiguity often emerges in the storming phase – when roles and influence are still being negotiated and tensions rise. This is where the CFO can step into a pivotal role: not just as a provider of data, but as a catalyst for clarity. 

The table below reimagines Tuckman’s framework through a CFO’s lens, offering practical ways to turn tension into traction at every stage of executive collaboration. 

Phase What it looks like How CFOs can act as a strategic partner
Forming 
Initial mobilisation 
  • Leaders are cautious, roles unclear, and initial conversations are surface level.  
  • Trust is low.
  • People may defer to hierarchy or avoid challenge.  
  • Multiple governance layers, large senior leadership teams and lack of accountability.
  • Broaden the table: Ensure the right voices are involved from the outset – from IT, Risk, tax to ESG – to prevent roadblocks later in the process.  Ensure the wider capitals in decision making are understood. 
  • Foster openness: Share your own concerns and challenges upfront, fostering trust through vulnerability. 
  • Position finance as an enabler, not a blocker: Demonstrate curiosity and openness – positioning finance as a partner.  
Storming 
Emerging challenge and tension 
  • Differing views start to surface. 
  • Tensions rise as leaders assert individual priorities and challenge assumptions. This healthy tension is essential for progress but can derail alignment if not managed effectively.  
  • Align efforts to common goals: Use a broad mix of metrics - financial, people agenda, ESG, customer impact, and operational - to align ambitions and prevent siloed priorities from shaping the discussion. 
  • Channel constructive debate: Use scenario analysis, stress tests and other sensitivities to illuminate trade-offs and risks. 
  • Clarify the ‘who’ and ‘how’: Ensure ownership is clear and built into reporting structures, delegated authorities and terms of reference.   
Norming 
Collaborative alignment 
  • Roles and responsibilities become clearer.   
  • Trust grows, and collaboration improves. 
  • Leaders begin to operate with a shared purpose and focus on execution.  
  • Show up consistently: Ensure frequent face time, and avoid frequent shifts in strategy, format, forum, and agenda. 
  • Embed shared KPIs: Encourage joint ownership of metrics and embed them into operational plans and regular reporting rhythms. 
  • Strengthen cross-functional partnerships: Use finance business partnering to provide other functions with tailored insights that will allow them to execute effectively. 
Performing 
Strategic execution and synergy 
  • The team operates with high trust and shared ownership. 
  • Dialogue is open and focused on long-term value.
  • The change is embedded, and business units are aligned on purpose, strategy, culture, and results. 
  • Sustain momentum: Alignment isn’t a ‘one-and-done' exercise. Regular strategic check-ins ensure progress stays on track. 
  • Engage the board and investors: Share timely, credible updates that connect strategic choices to financial outcomes. 
  • Drive forward-looking insight: Establish feedback loops with reporting that highlights emerging risks, opportunities, and trends. 
testimonial client avatar
"The key to working effectively with [the Board] is to discuss issues well in advance of any meetings and brief the directors on the direction that we would be recommending – and why. That's probably where I get more value, when I approach them for help to solve problems or for guidance on where we should be going as an organisation. The other thing is making sure they’ve got good quality board packs and giving them the right level of information about our organisation. As executives, we could do a lot more to tailor and focus what we do."
Claire Dudley-Scales CFO

Earning allies over time

Simon Davidson, Head of Finance Consulting

When trust is high, Finance is brought into decisions early. When it’s low, even the best data and insight is sidelined. That trust needs to be earned in the quieter moments: the regular check-ins, consistent collaboration, and a steady presence that instils confidence over time.

Yet only 22% of CIOs and 34% of CPOs say they meet regularly with their CFO outside of those key moments. That signals a missed opportunity.

David Maister’s Trust Equation offers a practical framework to pinpoint what each set of stakeholders needs to trust your leadership – and where there might be gaps.

The prompts below aren’t one-size-fits-all – you know your stakeholders’ needs best – but they are designed to get you thinking about where influence might be strong, where there may be changes needed.

The trust equation:

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) ÷ Self-Orientation

CEO C-suite peers Board and Investors
Credibility 
Set out your stall early. Align your vision for finance’s role to the strategy and articulate how it will create, protect and retain value. Show how you will facilitate a decision-making platform that supports their shift into Horizons 2 and 3. 
Take time to understand each function’s unique blockers and priorities.  Make your strategic intent for the role clear and position finance as an enabler for achievement of goals. 
Demonstrate deep understanding of business model, market dynamics, and capital allocation. Focus on forward-looking capital strategy; anticipate directors’ questions early.  
Reliability 
Be a steady, solutions-focused partner. Deliver on promises and keep the CEO informed.  
Honour commitments consistently in line with strategic priorities and build team capacity to support this. Build confidence through consistency.  
Meet reporting timelines and follow through. Ensure board packs are always timely, insights based and accountable, and closely aligned to the strategic agenda.  
Intimacy 
Build trust through regular, informal check-ins. Be a valuable sounding board.  
Engage in collaborative planning and proactive support. Your only interactions shouldn't be high-stakes. 
Communicate transparently and proactively.  Create space for open dialogue so sensitive issues can be raised early..  
Self-Orientation 
Focus on shared success, framing insights around what matters to the CEO and the business, not just finance.  
Lead with curiosity in your conversations: “What’s the most valuable challenge I can help you solve?” Scenario modelling isn’t just about forecasting—it’s about surfacing the hidden opportunity costs and helping leadership teams make informed, aligned decisions. 
Prioritise long-term stakeholder trust over short-term optics. Tailor information to their needs – focus on strategic clarity, relevance, and brevity to support effective decision-making. 
testimonial client avatar
"Establishing that alignment needs to happen before any specific investment discussion, and it isn’t a ‘one and done’ exercise. You need it throughout everything you do - whether it's when you’re raising capital, so you attract investors who share your vision, or when assembling your board or management team. And you need to revisit this consistently, so it stays embedded in the way decisions are made."
Barry McGonagle CFO, Snappy Shopper

Data that builds trust today – and unlocks strategic capacity for tomorrow 

Mark O'Sullivan, Head of Technology and Digital Services

When data is timely, accurate and relevant it does not just inform decisions; it earns confidence, and the permission to shift the conversation from reporting the past to shaping the future.

Only 32% of CEOs tell us they use robust data and scenario modelling to foster healthy tensions within the C-suite, without slowing decision-making. This signals a critical gap: many leadership teams lack the data agility needed to navigate the natural tension between today’s priorities and tomorrow’s ambitions.   

The CFO is uniquely positioned to turn the tide. But doing so requires more than better dashboards; it demands a shift in how data is used to illuminate trade-offs, demonstrate the impact on capitals beyond financial,  enable foresight, and build strategic capacity. 

The CFO Scorecard is a practical tool to help finance leaders reflect on where data improvement efforts are needed across three horizons: 

  • Horizon 1: Business protection and short-term performance
  • Horizon 2: Scaling initiatives and emerging opportunities
  • Horizon 3: Innovation, transformation, and long-term growth  

Hover over each quadrant to assess where your current data capabilities sit—and where investment will deliver the greatest strategic return. 

Once gaps are identified, evaluate each initiative through four lenses: 

  • Accuracy – Is the data correct and free from errors?
  • Timeliness – Is it current enough to inform forward-looking decisions?
  • Consistency – Are definitions and sources aligned across teams?
  • Relevance – Does it directly support the decisions you're trying to influence? 

This evaluation will help you identify what needs to change, and where stakeholder engagement is required to make it happen. This is a critical step in ensuring the data you bring to the C-suite is not just technically sound, but strategically valuable. 

testimonial client avatar
"It’s easy to argue the investment case for automation because of the tangible ROI. However, CFOs must potentially work harder to demonstrate that data quality is vital to sustainable success. By treating data as a strategic asset from the outset, organisations can unlock greater efficiencies, insights and returns from their digital investments."
Mark O'Sullivan Head of Technology and Digital Services

Reclaiming time to lead 

Simon Davidson, Head of Finance Consulting

Our research found that the most common barrier to elevating Finance's strategic role is deceptively simple: a lack of time.

That’s easier said than solved. CFOs want to elevate themselves “out of the weeds” but are juggling intense demands—from reporting cycles to stakeholder engagement—and carving out space for strategic thinking can feel impossible. 

One simple tool to help is the Urgent–Important Matrix, which maps tasks on a grid: 

  • Urgency on the horizontal axis
  • Importance on the vertical axis

This helps distinguish between what’s pressing and what’s truly pivotal. 

  • Top right = urgent and important → do now.
  • Bottom left = neither urgent nor important → delegate, delay, or stop. 

You’ve likely seen frameworks like this before—some simple, some more complex. But it’s not about finding the perfect one. It’s about having a structure you consistently revisit, so urgency doesn’t drown out importance.

Strategic leadership requires space to think, challenge, and connect. This matrix is a reminder to protect that space—and to lead with intention, not just reaction.  

Ready to refocus? Start with a CFO Room

At Grant Thornton, our one-to-one, partner-led half-day workshop gives finance leaders the space to step back, refocus, and work on the business — not just in it.

Together, we’ll cut through the noise and build a clear, 180-day personal action plan. You’ll define your leadership goals, align priorities with strategy, assess team and stakeholder dynamics, and leave with a roadmap tailored to your biggest opportunities and challenges. 

What participants say:

"The CFO Room provides a rare opportunity to step out of the day-to-day, offering a space for candid discussions, strategic insights, and real-time problem-solving with advisors who truly understand the challenges of the C-suite. The depth of conversation, challenged thinking and the quality of insight have helped me make more confident, informed decisions."

Ruaridh Hook
Chief Financial Officer, Rightmove

Metrics that matter  

Pinkesh Patel, Financial Reporting Partner

Access to accurate, timely data is essential – but not all data deserves a seat at the table. To bring clarity to leadership discussions, you need to amplify the metrics that matter.   

When KPIs are tightly defined, they create a common language that aligns priorities across functions and keeps the business focused on what truly drives value.

Consider whether your KPIs are:
 

Businesses often tell us their strategy is focused on ‘growth’ – but is that growth of revenue or profit; of customer numbers or average customer spend; or of existing geography or new territories?  

Measure what you value – or you’ll end up valuing what you measure. The KPIs you spotlight should reflect the specific levers your strategy is pulling, not generic proxies. This ensures board and executive conversations stay focused on what truly drives enterprise value. 

 

Lagging indicators (e.g. EBITDA, cash conversion) are essential for reporting, but retrospective. Leading indicators - like pipeline velocity, churn signals, or operational throughput – are what allows the business to steer performance.

Identifying lead indicators with a proven correlation to future outcomes is challenging – but this is where finance teams can bring analytical rigour to strategic forecasting and scenario planning.  

It’s important to recognise the challenge of communicating to diverse stakeholders how horizon scanning – such as anticipating changes in accounting standards or regulatory frameworks – can materially impact reported KPIs. These adjustments may significantly shift the way key metrics are presented, sometimes without any corresponding change to the underlying business performance or cash position, making clear explanation and context essential for informed decision-making. 

 

To drive alignment and decision-making at the top, KPIs must be intentionally spotlighted – not just reported. That means surfacing them consistently in board packs, executive briefings, and reviews, with clear narrative around why they matter and how they link to strategic outcomes.

The right metrics, in the right forums, at the right moments, will allow you greater influence over direction and reinforce joint priorities. 

A team built to influence 

Simon Davidson, Head of Finance Consulting

With only 26% of CFOs saying financial and tax factors are fully embedded in strategic decision-making across the business, this isn’t a challenge the CFO can solve alone.  

You need a team equipped to interpret complex data, challenge assumptions, and craft compelling narratives that translate the 'what' into the 'so what' and promote the discussion of 'now what'. While many finance functions are rightly investing in digital and analytical capabilities, partnering with the business demands a broader skillset: commercial acumen, strategic thinking, and strong communication. 

Here are six essential capabilities to help your team deliver impact: 

Finance business partnering  

Business functions operate with varied domain knowledge and perspectives.  Finance business partnering brings advanced analysis, insight, influence, and challenge into cross-functional conversations.   

Whether in a formal organisation design or cultural shifts (framed by performance management), it requires emotional intelligence, curiosity and the ability to elicit and interpret the right information within a strategic frame. 
Commercial acumen 
Most employees are specialists in their own areas.  Developing commercial acumen empowers teams to connect the dots, solve through an organisational frame and contribute meaningfully to trade-offs. 
Domain knowledge
Insight is only valuable when grounded in context.  To generate relevant, actionable intelligence, finance teams need a deep understanding of their sector, customer acquisition dynamics, and strategic ambitions. This context creates a common language across the business—one that enables Finance to move beyond reporting and into shaping decisions. 
Ethical principles
Insight without integrity can mislead. One of the most common pitfalls is shaping analysis to fit pre-existing assumptions or desired outcomes. That’s why ethical guiding principles must be well established—ensuring insight is complete, accurate, and free from bias.
CFOs and their teams must be trusted not only for what they know, but for how they interpret and communicate it. 
Creativity
Strategic decision-making is rarely linear. It’s complex, surprising, and often emotional. The human element adds a layer of nuance that technology alone can’t replicate.
An inquisitive mindset, creative approach, and openness to experimentation—even failure—help uncover new options and unlock value in unexpected places.
In a world of automation and AI, creativity remains a key differentiator. 
Methodical approaches  
Even with the right skills, teams need structured ways to apply them. Develop frameworks tailored to your sector and strategy that help colleagues interpret data consistently and confidently - turning insight into influence.

Whether it’s scenario modelling, investment evaluation, or performance forecasting, methodical approaches ensure that Finance delivers clarity, not just complexity. 

Self-check: six reflections to take forward

Whether these frameworks and tips are familiar or not for you, it is good practice thinking that’s easy to overlook and worth revisiting.

Before you dive into your next task, take 5-10 minutes to step back and reflect on: 

1

Am I assuming my peers' needs through a financial lens, or regularly capturing feedback on how I can best support?

 

2

What’s one key relationship I need to strengthen over the next 6 months to expand Finance’s strategic footprint?

3

What operational areas are taking up my time out of habit or tradition, and what needs to happen to take that off my plate?

4

How often do I invest in coaching, development, or cross-functional exposure for my team? 

5

Who are my key strategic allies, and am I investing enough in maintaining and growing those long-term relationships? 

6

Am I consciously evolving my leadership style to meet the changing needs of the business, or relying on approaches that served me in the past?

Step back. Reset. Build your 180-day plan.

The CFO Room isn’t just a workshop — it’s your space to pause, reflect, and reset.

In a one-to-one, partner-led session, we’ll guide you through four focused steps to help you cut through complexity and build a 180-day personal action plan:

  1. Clarify your leadership goals: Explore the hopes, fears and legacy tied to your role — and what your stakeholders expect from you.
  2. Prioritise what really matters: Step back from firefighting and align your priorities with business strategy. We’ll help you group these into manageable themes for confident delivery.
  3. Strengthen your support system: Evaluate your team and stakeholders — identifying gaps, strengths, and actions to boost your effectiveness.
  4. Build your 180-day roadmap: Leave with a clear, actionable plan tailored to your biggest opportunities and challenges — and we’ll follow up to help keep you on track.

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