CFO 4.0 - The Future of Finance

256. 2025 Highlights: Transforming Finance Conversations with Today's Finance Leaders

• Hannah Munro

Share episode

Send us your thoughts

In this special highlights episode of CFO 4.0, host Hannah Munro reflects on the most impactful conversations of 2025, bringing together lessons from CFOs, transformation leaders, and futurists. Drawing on insights from across the year, this episode explores what finance leaders have really learned as the role continues to evolve under pressure from growth, technology, and rising expectations.

In this episode, we reflect on

  • Why finance transformation fails when it is treated as a separate role rather than a day-to-day mindset
  • How CFOs are learning to make faster, better decisions without waiting for perfect data
  • What the explosive adoption of AI, including ChatGPT, signals for finance teams and leadership expectations
  • The practical warning signs that data integrity and control environments are no longer fit for growth
  • How CFOs can professionalise fast-growing businesses without killing the agility that made them successful
  • The realities of growth versus profit in private equity-backed organisations and what investors actually expect

This episode features highlights and perspectives from 

and offers a clear-eyed view of where finance leadership is heading next.

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary. And with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition. To win at work, drive your career forwards, and lead with confidence. Join Hannah Monroe, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

SPEAKER_09:

Because as you said, you you lived and breathed it in your day-to-day role.

SPEAKER_04:

I believe one of the biggest reasons is that we are managing a packed agenda, right? Finance people, anywhere I go, anyone I talk to, including myself, and I was I was working in corporate, I would just not have enough time to actually step back and look at what I am doing. I would just be busy and you know, somehow get the somehow get the month end done, somehow get this budgeting season done. I will look at my files once I come back. So stepping back and then getting that time to actually improve things, that was one of that I do believe is one of the reasons. I I do believe that again, you know, finance people are smart people. We are we are like, I mean, the way we are trained and the way we have been working. I mean, we we have our pulse in the entire business, pulse of the entire business. We know pretty much what is happening across the business. We have good commercial equipment as well, we have good um good understanding of the business also. But I believe it is just that the way some organizations are set up as well, and the way our our whole um organizational uh culture or the way or the the functional cultures are set up that okay, you know, I mean this is finance, this is how I'm I'm doing some specific work, and this is how I need to do transformation, as you rightly pointed out, is a mindset, right? It is not something that is going to be done by a transformation team. So, for example, in in my role when I was doing transformation, I was just one person. I didn't have a team reporting into me. All I was doing, I was working with different people across the organization to help them transform their ways of working. At the end of the day, it is the transformation needs to come from the inside, right? That okay, you know, this is what we really, really need to. And I always encourage everyone who comes to me and they say, Oh, I want to grow my career in transformation because it's it's it's a happening thing. Everyone wants to get into digital transformation, AI, and whatnot. I always tell them it's not about you getting a role in a transformation or whether I mean your company has a transformation function as well or not. It is all about how you improve your current ways of working. It's a journey, it's a mindset change. It will take some time. I do see people getting there, people are now challenging and questioning things with all these AI and all these different technologies coming up, people are questioning things. But I do believe a lot goes back to our ways of working, how we have been doing things in a certain way, and then just not getting enough time to actually transform. And then the good thing is that once you do it, it creates a virtuous cycle. Once you transform something, once you save up time from something, you get more time to do something better. And then when you do that, you get even more time to do more things better because you keep on improving things. That becomes part of your DNA. And when that happens, it creates a virtuous cycle of productivity for you. So it's it's it's not easy, it's not simple, uh, one plus one, but this this is how I this is one of the reasons I would say that that that uh probably need a bit more bit more mindset change.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, I call it the transformation snowball. Once you get it rolling down the hill, it starts to grow and have more impact and need that successful first small win to kind of build the momentum and the buy-in from the team. Once you got that, um I won't say it's played and sailing from there, but it's a lot easier once you've done that. And you mentioned that um chat GPT in particular took the community, the AI community, by surprise. How did that happen? As in, how was it a surprise? You know, what what what's changed?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. Because internally, when um OpenAI released the model, um, ChatGPT, I think it was GPT 3.5, so it was in between three and four. Um, they said we're just gonna do a limited release, we're gonna open, we're gonna throw this over the fence and see how um what the adoption is like. They expected a million or so users. Uh, within two months, they had 100 million. It was the fastest downloaded app in the history of the world, right? So people caught on really quick, and it's like, wow, you know, intelligence is cool and sexy, right? People love intelligence. So it just took off, and and we just have not looked back since then. So even internally at OpenAI, they just thought this is a little research project. We'll throw it over the fence and see how people like it, expecting a few people in the community, you know, to sort of pick it up and play with it. Before you know it, remember it was just coming up to Christmas. It was the end of November, coming at December. Everyone's sort of thinking about Christmas. Come back in January and it just like took off 100 million downloads and the world. I mean, we just haven't looked back, right? It no one hasn't heard of Chat GPT. Yeah. It was a phenomenon. It was crazy. I mean, we've never been here before. The internet was pretty amazing. That took off really quick, but it took a few years, right? Maybe 10 or 20. This is this has taken two. So yeah, we're in new territory, makes it exciting, makes it scary.

SPEAKER_09:

We talk a lot in accounting generally about materiality, but I don't find people applying it to decision making. They will literally wait till they've got the penny at the end of you know, that everything's given to them before they move forwards. And actually, that that's a real key point, isn't it? Speed and agility. And and it's so easy to kind of get bogged down and and to avoid making decisions because you you don't have the level of detail that you want to make that decision really safe. So, how do you approach that, both with you know, maybe an existing accounting team that you're working alongside or with owners? Is that a conversation that you have with them, or is it almost something that you've had to get over yourself personally?

SPEAKER_05:

Uh it is definitely something I've had to get over personally. And I remember some I remember sitting down in in in no 20 years ago in practice and and doing somebody's books and somebody somebody saying, You're getting lost in the detail, right? And I was definitely that person. I couldn't see what was going on. I could I couldn't quite see, you know, I couldn't quite see where I went from there. I I think the tricky bit here is some of this is actually just good old-fashioned experience, right? And some of the businesses we've looked after, or some of the businesses I've looked after as an employee, went through some terrible times. Generally, I would like to point out they were external things that were done to us. But, but, but actually, they're remarkable learning experiences. When stuff's going wrong, do you know what it's a fantastic learning experience? And now years later, I look back at that stuff and say, actually, do you know what anything that I meet is probably not as bad as some of those situations? So there's on the one hand, there's a calmness and there's a lack of being phased by stuff. Somebody brings you something, you go, I can actually I can see why you think the end of the world is nigh, but actually we've got a bit of time just to take breath and just just sort ourselves out. And that's that's learned. I don't think you can I don't think you can necessarily um be trained into that in a in a short period of time. And it's interesting, I was talking to a competitor firm a couple of months ago who wanted acquire the model of how to become how to how to how to grow CFOs on a rapid basis. I don't I just don't think it's necessarily possible. I think you could be a really good accountant on a on a rapid basis, but uh that bulk of experience, those tools and tricks and tips that you learn from different places, the mistakes you make in different places, that's what gives you the spurs in order to try and make a decision. I think some of so on the one hand, that's about that's about personality and it's about experience, but I think there is something that can be learned, and I think there is an approach that can be learned, because actually I think it's KPI led, right? Because I think if you're starting to look at the big picture stuff and if you're starting to look at the themes, the story within the business, and I think the CFO is actually the chief storyteller. Because actually we're trying to understand what's going on in the business, whether that's in finance or elsewhere, and trying to pull that together into some sort of cohesive story about why we're fulfilling strategy or why we're pushing the same direction. And if you're trying to wait until to get you get the last decimal space for um for to calculate a KPI, actually it's irrelevant, isn't it? Because aren't aren't KPIs by definition broader? You know, they are they are impressionable. So I think you know, it it is also interesting that I see lots of people who are unable to process a KPI, unable to pull them together, particularly about sales and marketing KPIs, because they actually I just don't know the answer to that one function. Not appreciating that actually it's probably okay to take a guess at it in the first instance and come back and colour in the detail. Because if you wait for it all to be perfect, back to your point, actually you're never gonna make a decision.

SPEAKER_09:

What what does the the short or near-term future hold within the AI world? If I give you the uh 12 months ahead, what what do you think that looks like?

SPEAKER_06:

There's a lot of uh discussion on this topic. Some people feel that within 12 months it's possible we will have artificial general intelligence, which is a term that's often abbreviated as AGI, which means that the AI will have as much general knowledge as the humans. And typically AIs have only got narrow knowledge today. They're quite broad, they understand lots of subjects, but you can eventually find out, gosh, this AI's got no common sense. You know, it's asking me something really stupid here, and uh even a human with a hundred IQ will never ask something quite so foolish as this. So it lacks full general reasoning capabilities, and it's the holy grail of AI since Alan Turing spoke about it in the early 1950s. There's other people who wrote about it in, I think, the 1870s, Samuel Butler's book Darwin Among the Machines. If I've got the title right, he envisions that there would be AIs with as much capability as humans in all of the cognitive tasks. So when might this come? And until recently, most people thought it's several decades away, maybe fifty years away. But as a result of the changes in the last few years, most people have reduced their timelines. And they have now said it's not going to be 20 or 50 years ahead, it might be five or ten years. Well, in the last year or so, more people are sticking their heads above the parapets and saying it might just be twelve or twenty four months. And how and else this is possible, it's because you use AIs to improve AIs. It's no longer dependent just on humans coming up with the new ideas, just as AIs can suggest holidays or can suggest music to listen to or can suggest pictures or text, then they can actually suggest changes in their own architecture. Now they're not in control yet, but they are coming up with lots of suggestions which the humans in the AI companies are adapting and approving, which is why you might have uh faster uh progress. Some researchers talk about there being a whole factory full of geniuses. That's what you get if you have the most powerful AIs and give it enough computational bandwidth. It's like having a huge factory of somebody said 10,000 human geniuses might be uh represented by this. So when you've got something approaching that, you can get a lot faster progress. And what does that mean? Well, it's going to change absolutely everything.

SPEAKER_09:

Let's talk specifically about data integrity at this stage. What are some of the things that you're looking for to say we've got a problem here? What are the sorts of things that you would see as a CFO that would tell you, actually, we need to go back to basics, I need to get hold of this?

SPEAKER_02:

And I think there's two ways of looking at it as well, Hannah, because you could take the view that the control environment, um, the production of data is somebody else's responsibility, and I'll work on a need-to-know basis. I I'm personally not like that. I need to understand that I have really good integrity of data, and as I mentioned, I've proven it to myself. So some of the some of the warning signs, and I think you and I have spoken before, Hannah, around the fact that I joined organizations, it and this may be particular to my circumstances as well. I've tended to work for organizations which are in a growth phase. So they're either growing organically, uh very uh in a very significant way, or we're embedding and looking to create uh mergers and acquisitions environment. So the I I'm I'm in a pro I'm in a rolling process anyway, so I can't stand still. Going back to your question about what what are the signs, so uh lateness of production of data. So we as heads of finance will have a timetable around month end, or the leading into the production of data for a regulatory submission or a compliance submission, or leading into a budget process or a year-end process. If there are issues around people submitting data late or having to work really extended hours to meet timetables and deadlines, and there's a significant element of variation to the time that the data is produced, that feels like a warning sign that we have single points of failure, we have too many manual processes, we have uh a creaking environment that is just about managing to cope with where we are in the organizational phase, but is absolutely not able to cope with further growth. And I'm asking myself the question again: if I was to join this organization right now and I had a completely blank sheet of paper, would I set up that control and structured environment the way it is now? And if the answer is no, then I'm trying to think about what actions and developments I can put into place to make it more uh more routine. So I'm looking for routine, no shocks, no surprises. It's like a bit of a utopia, but anything that punctures that balloon in terms of shocks, surprises, missing forecasts both ways as well. Um missing forecast in a good way can sometimes be as bad as missing forecasts on the negative side as well. It just means that we can't be totally in control of our forecasts. And I'm looking at the historical data, is what I'd been told two to three months ago, is that being borne out? Or is it something that is now something that I heard two to three months ago and it's now irrelevant because I'm making my own view? So it does sound as if I'm focusing very much on an inward-looking part still, but I think at that 30, 60, 90 day uh phase of joining or stepping up in an organization, that integrity of data is just so important because you're representing the numbers and the financial performance of the organization to the rest of the stakeholders, and then we're making decisions on that. So I really need to understand that I'm in control of that.

SPEAKER_09:

I thought there was an interesting comment you said earlier about finding the balance between when you're taking a scrappy startup, and I love that term, I can just I can see an image of uh of that, um, to I guess professionalizing it without losing the core of what's made it successful. So, what does that look like from a finance perspective? How do you balance, I guess, mitigating risk with being you know, reactive and agile enough to cope with the requirements of the business?

SPEAKER_08:

I think kind of go forward principles are quite important that you can sort of flex up and down. So it's sort of what processes you create having the flexibility within that. But um for me, it was always kind of what's a need to have and what's a want to have, and the need to have everyone needs to be on board with because it's compliance, it's legislation. You sort of can't really change that, regardless of who you're dealing with and what people like and dislike, and then the want to have. How is it that you can build that education and engagement piece? Because usually it's sort of people on the finance side of the fence understanding why that's a problem operationally, and then operationally it's understanding okay, what's going to be the consequence of this? You know, something as simple as expenses. Why can't we spend£100 on that? Well, you're gonna pay tax on that, so this is going to be a bigger cost to your business, and therefore your return's going to be lower. Oh, okay. So if we set it at this, yes. And then on the other side, um, we might have clients where we will just have to spend because we're in a sales process, we're going to, you know, perception is important. Okay, let's include discretion for so many directors to enable this to go through. And it's I think it's finding the common ground. So you, you know, you were in a company for 90 days.

SPEAKER_09:

How much could you actually achieve? So I I took it as a bit of a personal challenge and thought I would step through how I would approach. And and I think of it in in three phases, really. So the first phase is I want to stabilize and make sure that what we're producing is strong and consistent. And then the second phase would be more about automation and efficiency and controls. And then the third phase, I would focus on how do I really accelerate what finance does. So thinking about budgets, forecasting, that sort of thing. So because all of that has to come out of a strong base. So let's talk about how we how we do that. So the and I think what's really important is you can make a huge amount of difference in a very short space of time, but you have to have focus um to try and get in there. So I am making assumption in these like 90 days um that I am in that company for that full 90 days. Like I'm full time dedicated to helping them. Change and transform. So when you're setting your own timelines, just bear this in mind and um don't try and set yourself up if you you know to do this if you've got um obviously the the day job to do as well. Okay. So what would I do? So in that first 80 days, I want to get hold of how the the finance team operates, right? And I want to make sure that they're operating in a consistent way. So what that means is it's repeatable, it's scalable, etc. Okay. And and I'm obviously assessing at that point where I want to go for the rest of my 90 days. So um the areas that I would personally focus on in that first 30 days is bank. So how you know, how well is my how quickly and how accurately is my bank being reconciled. I'd be looking at um the AR and AP ledgers. So I'd be looking at um how consistently and quickly uh an invoice is coming in, um, what you know, what controls do I have around there? I'd also be looking at how well we're collecting cash, right? So if I think about it, I want to know what I um I want to know my I want to know my cash position, I want to be really strong there, want to make sure that money's flowing in and that I'm controlling the flow out. And then I would then do an assessment of my reporting structures because if I have to go into a chart accounts redesign, um, all of that would have to happen so you know, happen quickly in order for me to achieve my end goal, which is you know, strong reporting to the board and management team. So E is focused on growth rather than profit. How true or false is that statement?

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, so I'd start off generally, I think these myths got so many advisors and interested parties and recruiters, and actually the number of direct conversations that happen like this are very few, which is one of the reasons I was really encouraged to do this series was to sort of bring this all to life. Growth versus profit. Right. Now, what I would say is a zero growth plan is not going to get much attention from a private equity house. It's just not. But that is very different to saying that private equity is only interested in growth versus profit. And it it depends again on the scale of business. So if you're a venture business, you have to grow because you're next to nothing. And again, it's growth at all costs. Off you go, like grow, grow, grow. If you're a traditional business, you want a growth plan. But what nearly all private equity will do is weigh up the different levels of profit you can deliver. And one of the big trade-offs there is how much are you investing for the future versus how much are you realizing in that year? And like we've talked about in the cycle, that's not a straightforward question to answer. But what is definitely true is it's not all of one or the other. Like I've told you, you cannot have a zero growth plan. Like that just doesn't work. But yeah, where you might cost cut to grow profit or something like that. No, you've got to have growth. But actually, the degrees of profit you're realizing is a discussion. So, yeah, it's not as simple as the myth would uh make it make it sound.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey Google, what's the best accounting software for my business? Give it a couple of years, and I'll bet you she'll be able to answer you pretty accurately. But for now, it's still one of the few questions Google can't give you an answer for. But we can. Take our free quiz and find out which stage products is the right fit for your business. Just head to itassolutions.co.uk

Head Shot

Hannah Munro

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

CFO Bookshelf Artwork

CFO Bookshelf

Mark Gandy
FP&A Unlocked Artwork

FP&A Unlocked

Paul Barnhurst