Not Every Finance Hire Needs to Be the Future CFO
The best finance teams mix future leaders with specialists who want to get exceptionally good at what they do. Hiring well means knowing which one each seat needs.
One CFO I worked with started in investment banking, where analysts and associates were hired partly on whether they could one day become a Managing Director.
In that environment, it makes sense. Investment banks have established career structures and large numbers of people moving through them. Some progress quickly, others level off, and a small number eventually reach the top. I've occasionally seen the same thinking applied to hiring in an operating company. It doesn’t translate.
Most finance functions are relatively small. There might be a CFO, Finance Director, Financial Controller, Head of FP&A and Treasurer, with a limited number of senior roles beneath them. There simply aren't enough seats at the top for everyone to keep moving upwards.
I've worked with hiring managers who are very deliberate about the type of person they want in a role. For one position, they might tell me they're looking for a steady character. Someone who enjoys that area of finance, wants to improve it, and sees themselves building expertise over a number of years. They aren't joining with the expectation of another promotion eighteen months down the line. For another role in exactly the same team, the brief can be completely different. The hiring manager may want someone who will challenge established ways of thinking, take on broader responsibilities and, if things go well, compete for a more senior position in the future.
The mistake is assuming the second person is automatically the better hire because their ambition is more visible. A good finance team needs succession, but it also needs continuity. A finance function made up entirely of future CFOs would probably be just as difficult to manage as one with no leadership pipeline at all.
There is also an important difference between wanting to stay in a discipline and wanting to stand still. A Financial Controller can spend five years in control and still improve reporting, strengthen processes, develop people, implement systems and take on increasingly complex responsibilities. Their title may not change, but their contribution can increase significantly over that period.
Too often, career progression is viewed purely through the lens of promotion. In reality, some of the strongest finance professionals build depth before they build breadth. They become trusted experts, influential leaders and critical members of a business long before they take on a bigger title.
The opposite problem exists as well. If someone wants to become a CFO within five years and joins a business where there is realistically nowhere for them to go, the outcome is often predictable. At some point their ambitions and the opportunities available stop lining up. The warning signs are usually there long before they hand in their notice. The role simply wasn't the right fit for what that individual wanted from the next stage of their career. Having that conversation at offer stage, rather than at the first review, avoids most of it.
The best finance teams are rarely built from one type of person. They're usually a blend of future leaders, technical specialists, trusted operators and long term team members, each bringing something different.
So when hiring, the question isn’t whether every candidate has the potential to reach the top of the organisation. It’s what the business needs from that particular seat, what the person sitting in it actually wants, and whether the two are aligned.
