CEO vs CFO

When the CEO and CFO at a company are in tune, it’s good news for the business—and the CFO’s career.

The dynamic between a CEO and CFO can significantly influence company direction. CEOs are looking for their CFOs to go well beyond the balance sheet to serve as strategic partners who contribute to growth. They expect CFOs to own the challenges of financial transparency, risk management, and regulatory compliance, applying skills of financial foresight, strategic leadership, and real-time, data-backed business insight. This partnership between the CEO and CFO requires trust, respect, and communication to thrive and drive business performance. The relationship can include tension over where responsibilities overlap and align, as CFO leaders expand their job description and focus on driving their organization’s overall business strategy. In this guide, we’ve partnered with Oana Labes, founder and president of Financiario, to share her learnings from successful partnerships between the CEO and CFO. 

Oana has worked with and financed hundreds of businesses. Through her advisory firm Financiario, she now complements the capacity of CFOs, VPs of finance, and controllers to help CEOs and Boards of Directors grow revenue, improve profitability, and maximize enterprise value through strategic financial planning.Each page in this guide highlights a different aspect of the relationship between the two roles, including differences in required skillsets, key performance indicators for each role, and what they each wish the other would do really well.