📬 Too big to fail: How to manage increasing responsibilities as CFO

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🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨

The 2026 Secret CFO Annual Audience Survey is open

This is your chance to have your say on the future of my content. I read every response and will take real action as a result. Please take a few minutes to give me your feedback.

I want to hear the questions that are most weighing you down. Remember, you can submit them anonymously if they are particularly tricky or sensitive.

👉 Send me your questions by filling out this form.

We’ve got some great topics. Here’s what’s on tap:

Now, let’s get into it.

PE CFO from Denmark asked:

CFOs are oftentimes also responsible for many other areas besides Finance: IT, Legal, Facility Management, Purchasing, Supply Chain, HR, Communications, interim COO/CEO/CTO, you name it.

What is your experience in dealing with everything that is NOT directly Finance, but which can suck up many of your hours in a day? I find it quite hard to say 'no' to additional responsibility (when asked by the Board/CEO) if I believe I can do a better job of leading the people responsible for other areas. But there are only so many hours in a day... How do you prioritize between the core Finance area, and everything else?

At some point I have had responsibility for all of those functions you mentioned, and a few more besides. So I completely understand this challenge, it’s very real.

In my CFO roles I have always worked as a de facto number two to the CEO. (I don’t believe in any of this copilots nonsense, it might sound nice, but the CEO is, and should be, the boss).

But as that number two whenever there was a vacancy, a reshuffle, or just something awkward without a natural home, it gravitated toward me as a sort of span breaker. Sometimes, that meant running point on big issues or crises areas, or running the business, while the CEO responds to a crisis.

So the patch can feel a little strange sometimes. But it is a pattern I have seen consistently across different businesses and different CEOs, so you might as well make peace with it. It's also a sign you are trusted, and valuable beyond your finance responsibilities.

This is how I’ve managed it.

You need strong functional specialists leading each non-finance area you are responsible for. People who are genuinely hands-on, know their function cold, and can run the day-to-day without you. What they typically need from you is strategic guidance, board and CEO management, and someone to connect them to the rest of the business.

That part I can do, even without deep functional expertise in every area.

Where it falls apart is when you try to insert a layer between yourself and the people doing the work. That just creates confusion and slows everything down. Or when the functional leaders are not strong enough and you get dragged into the operational detail.

Get it right and each non-finance function should need roughly one monthly deep dive, one weekly one-to-one, and some capacity held in reserve for when something blows up. And something will always be blowing up in at least one function at any given time.

Build that into your planning as the rule. Done well, the non-finance portfolio should take one to one and a half days a week.

That only works if the rest of your patch (finance function + driving the business) is set up to run needing you say 3-4 days per week. In a smaller business that means a strong controller who can own the day-to-day. In a larger one it means a properly structured team with clear ownership at every level.

Where these broad CFO roles go wrong is when they end up doing a lot of things to a mediocre standard. The answer is to build the right operating cadence with strong people underneath you, and then hold the line on it.

TLDR: Take the additional functions, but only if you have strong specialists to run them. Your job is strategic guidance and board management, not operational depth.

Fubeca from the US asked:

I'm a relatively new Controller (5 years of experience), MBA, actively pursuing my CPA, at a ~120-person manufacturing company. Our parent company is in bankruptcy proceedings and is actively trying to sell us. We're their only remaining asset. The underlying business is healthy, but the parent's CFO resigned months ago and I've had virtually no mentorship or direction.

As the highest-ranking finance employee, I'm managing everything but my problem is I don't know what I don't know. I can check the obvious boxes, but I have no one above me to tell me what I'm missing. I'm also excluded from all legal and restructuring discussions while still being responsible for day-to-day financial health.

Some customers are holding off on issuing POs until the sale resolves, so there's real near-term revenue uncertainty tied to a process I have no seat at the table for.

Is it a red flag that I can't articulate what a CFO would be doing that I'm not? For a Controller in this seat — good business, distressed parent, customers in wait-and-see mode, flying blind — where would you even begin?

Fubeca, this is a fairly extreme situation and I have a lot of empathy for you navigating it on five years of experience with no one above you to lean on.

First up, it is not a red flag that you cannot articulate what a CFO would be doing that you are not. It just means you have not been a CFO yet. It is a gap you are about to close faster than almost anyone your level, because you are living it in real time without a safety net.

On the restructuring discussions: I actually think being excluded is more protection than problem right now. Those conversations are distracting, politically complex, and outside your control. Your job is to keep the operating business healthy and valuable. That is the thing worth rescuing, and you are the person responsible for making sure it stays that way. Focus there.

Practically, I would anchor on a few things. Keep your cash flow visibility tight and current. Make sure your numbers are clean, well documented, and audit-ready, because whoever acquires this business will go straight to diligence and you will be the person they rely on. Think of that as your deliverable right now. Be the person who makes diligence easy, and keeps the operations on track.

On the customer uncertainty: you probably cannot fix that directly, but make sure the commercial team understands the financial impact of the wait-and-see dynamic clearly. If near-term revenue risk is real, it needs to be visible in your forecasting, not buried.

Now, here is the bigger picture.

If the business gets acquired, there is a strong chance you will be genuinely valuable to the new owner, at least in the short to medium term. You are the person with all the institutional memory, the history, and the relationships. There’ll likely be a moment where you can lean into that.

If it does not work out that way, and you find yourself looking for something new on the other side of this, you will have a story that most Controllers your age could not dream of telling. You kept a healthy business operating cleanly through a parent bankruptcy, with no CFO, no mentorship, and real commercial pressure. That will be an asset on your resume.

Either way, you are getting a free hit at experience that money cannot buy. See both outcomes as an opportunity and lean in hard.

Good luck.

TLDR: Keep the operating business clean, audit-ready, and healthy. Whatever happens next, you are building a story that will serve you well.

HonestAbe from Canada asked:

Can we all agree on a code word amongst the CFO community (we should let the recruiting firms know too) that can be used when interviewing for your next job to indicate that you are leaving your current role due to a multitude of conflicts of interest, fraud, shadiness exhibited by the owners and/or CEO? Misaligned values isn't strong enough...

HonestAbe… yes we can.

And I hereby decree, using my unanimous voting rights, that the word shall be: Uncrispy.

If you find yourself in a sticky situation and need to bolt, simply tell your recruiter that things have gotten a little uncrispy recently, and that Secret CFO said they would know what that meant.

But for the occasions that need a little more than a safe word, here is how I would actually frame it. Tell them there are some things that have happened, no names, no details, that have left you feeling professionally uncomfortable, and that it has told you it's time to move on. That is making it clear your integrity is being compromised by actions outside your control without saying anything you cannot stand behind.

If they push for more, simply say you would prefer not to elaborate, but that you are not someone who takes a step like this lightly, but a line has been crossed.

Any recruiter worth their salt will read between the lines immediately. And frankly, it will probably make you more attractive, not less. People who leave because they will not compromise their standards are exactly the kind of CFOs good businesses want to hire.

One of the best hires I ever made came after a candidate told me he had stood up to his board on a matter of integrity and resigned on the spot, despite having a mortgage to pay, and nothing lined up. I spent an hour going through every detail of that story, and by the end I would not have done a single thing differently. I hired him there and then.

Anyway, all this talk of safe words made me think of Venus in Furs by the Velvet Underground

TLDR: The word is uncrispy. Use it freely. And when you need more than a code word, "professionally uncomfortable" does the job without burning anything down.

A few of the biggest stories that every CFO is paying close attention to. This is the section you might not want to see your name in.

Ryanair’s CFO says the budget airline is preparing for an “armageddon situation”

As the big airlines roll off of their pre-war based fuel price hedging commitments they are having to adapt to a very new level of COGS. As ever, there will be casualties.

Academic accounting programs are having a hard time keeping up with AI education

Accounting professors are behind the times. That certainly isn’t new, but I expect AI is only making that worse.

Standard Chartered names a new CFO

Standard Chartered just made a longtime critic their CFO. For years, Manus Costello sat on the other side of the table and told investors what he really thought about this bank. Now he has to defend the numbers he used to pick apart. That's either a masterstroke of accountability or a very awkward Monday morning. Probably both.

ICYMI, here are some of my favorite finance/business social media posts from this week.

The greatest album of all time turned sixty years old this week. I have this in every limited edition and vinyl format you can imagine:

Let me know what you thought of today’s Mailbag. Just hit reply… I read every message.

Last weekend’s Playbook explores the different Working Capital cycle types and how to design them efficiently.

In last week’s Boardroom Brief, looked at how CFOs are dealing with a wave of AI-fueled fraud.

Disclaimer: I am not your accountant, tax advisor, lawyer, CFO, director, or friend. Well, maybe I’m your friend, but I am not any of those other things. Everything I publish represents my opinions only, not advice. Running the finances for a company is serious business, and you should take the proper advice you need