Ep. 107: Clive Webb - The Skills for the CFO of the Future

Contact Clive Webb:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clive-webb/


ACCA and IMA "The CFO of the Future":
https://www.imanet.org/insights-and-trends/business-leadership-and-ethics/the-changing-role-of-the-cfo


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Mitch:
(00:00)
Welcome to Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting
the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and
I'm here to kick off episode 107 of our series. The role of the
CFO has evolved and in turn  the skills required of aspiring
CFOs have changed too. In this episode, Clive Webb Senior
Insights Manager at ACCA shares his perspective on what today's
CFO is responsible for, what skills are needed, how the pandemic
impacted the role and the best ways to prepare for becoming a
CFO. Keep listening as we transition over to the conversation
now.

Adam: (00:46)
So Clive, how was the role of the CFO changing.?

Clive: (00:49)
Well,Adam. I think that's actually quite an interesting question
its is, right. I think for a lot of CFOs, the role it is
broadening, perhaps you could even say dramatically broadening,
and its focus and how it is perceived are changing quite
substantially. And what I mean by that is that certainly from the
research work that IMA and ACCA did together, we felt that the
role of the CFO was either increasing or significantly
increasing. And in our survey about 72% of the respondents felt
that the role was broadening out, and I'll talk about that in a
second. But actually quite crucially, and one of the things that
was quite strong in the report, we also asked a small selection
of CEO's their perception. And if you asked the same question to
them, you've got about 82%. So one of the things that we
repeatedly saw through the report was if you're going to demand
and supply side difference between the CEOs, who really expected
the CFO's to go even further than perhaps they thought that they
were going, and I think that broadening of the role is
characterized by a broader set of stakeholders, a broader set of
capitals, a broader set of responsibilities that all fall within
the CFO's domain.

Adam: (02:30)
That makes sense, so then what do you consider to be included in
the role CFO?

Clive: (02:36)
So I think the heart of the role remains the traditional
financial acumen and financial skill. And as one of the
interviewees put it, if the CFO doesn't get that right, then
that's the end of that CFO, you know. So that stewardship,
guardianship, asset safeguarding, traditional finance, recording,
acumen, all those sorts of things, risk management, internal
control, they are at the heart of the role.and very much still at
the heart of the role. However, the CFO, I think you can counter
itin two ways. Now the first of which is thou the, the right
hand, the conscience of the CEO. So where the CEO particularly is
looking more towards, sales, towards business growth, towards
strategic opportunities, the CFO, yes is looking towards those,
but also is the voice of dare I say, sanity. The voice of check
the constructive right hand in that process. So not only do you
need a view of the financial capital, the liquidity, the
organization, which we've seen through the pandemic, it is
absolutely vitally important. But if we think broader, it is a
role that now embraces  strategy. It still has that risk and
control side, but that risk and control side itself is changing.
And technology and data are playing fundamental parts. A lot of
CFOs increasingly talk about scenario modeling and growth
optimization as the future, and to do that, you need good
technology and that good technology has to be embedded in data
and that data has to align to the business strategy. They are
therefore leaders in the organization, and as we've seen supply
chains become increasingly challenge due to the pandemic they
need to be on top of that agenda and also the customer centric
agenda as well. And any of these broaden out into broader sense
of what your stakeholders may be, how you think about the
different capitals if you use the Integrated Reporting Councils
Framework of six capitals. A lot of our interviewees thought the
CFO increasingly needs to take view and manage stakeholder
relationships at senior level across all of those capitals. So
your investors are different. You are the ultimate consultant in
business sense, and you've got to have a mind of transactions,
M&A,  growth or divestiture, which, you know, the
pandemic is going to place, an increasing focus on as well. So
that's what I mean, it's a very much a broader role.

Adam: (05:52)
Yeah, it's definitely a lot broader and you've briefly mentioned
the pandemic and we're still in this pandemic and for the
foreseeable future and the vaccines and all those things put
aside, how has the pandemic impacted the role of the CFO?

Clive: (06:06)
I'll go back to a couple of comments, I think from some of our
interviewees, and one of them who actually was a CEO, but a
former CFO of a finance institution said, yeah, the role of the
CFO has been tested by the pandemic, and it's the reliance on the
CFO. That's going to become more important to give those
perspectives, to give that ability to see further, and it's
becoming an agile role is another one put it that there's no
place for perfectionism, but there is a place for being able to
be agile and to drive the business forward with a sense of
confidence and, and therefore understanding the various leavers
that are pulled. So in those two contexts, I think what we're
seeing and back to my point about the right hand of the CEO is
the CFO increases become a very important role in helping
organizations understand what the art of the possible is, what
the various scenarios that may play out will lead to, and
therefore how basically the organization can survive. And I think
the pandemic has reinforced the role of the CFO in very much
making that happen.

Adam: (07:33)
In the report, there's a six hypotheses and do these six
hypotheses, illustrate the changes happening now for many
CFOs?

Clive: (07:43)
Yeah. But that's ri...