Quietly, without a great deal of fanfare, the roles of chief financial officers throughout the corporate landscape of North American business have changed. For years, this was mostly a backward-looking support position. Accounting, managing cash flow, record keeping, tax preparation, governmental regulations and related tasks served as the primary focus. But things changed.
Perhaps it was the Great Recession, the threat of jail time for executives following Sarbanes-Oxley litigation tied to accounting catastrophes like Enron and WorldCom, or the newly discovered power of forward-looking analytics, but major corporations began viewing their financial leaders as more than just staff accountants and bookkeepers. As a group, CFOs have stepped into a new power position impacting their organization’s behavior in every department — and often driving profits to entirely new levels.