🏠︎ | Past Sessions | The Strategic CFO Leading Beyond the Numbers
- Event: Finance Forum 25
- Date: 7 October 2025
- Speakers
- Jo Malvern, Editor in Chief, AB Magazine
- Chris Naisby FCCA, CFO, Watergate Bay Hotel Limited
- Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
Quick summary
This session explored how the CFO role has expanded beyond financial control into enterprise leadership.
The discussion highlighted that while technical finance remains essential, the modern CFO is increasingly valued for judgement, influence, and the ability to connect financial insight to strategic decisions.
Speakers emphasised commercial context, stakeholder trust, and long term thinking as defining features of effective CFO leadership. Technology plays a supporting role, but mindset, relationships, and clarity of purpose are what ultimately enable finance leaders to shape outcomes beyond the numbers.
The CFO role is now defined by influence, not information
The session opened with a clear premise, the CFO role has evolved faster than many job descriptions suggest. Financial accuracy and control are no longer differentiators on their own. What distinguishes the strategic CFO is how finance insight is used to inform choices across the organisation.
Chris Naisby reflected on his experience across IPOs, M&A, restructuring and growth, noting that the CFO’s value increasingly sits in framing options and consequences for the board and executive team, not simply presenting results.
In this model, finance becomes an enabler of confident decision making. The CFO’s credibility comes from consistency and clarity, but their impact comes from how well they translate numbers into business narratives.
From reporting outcomes to shaping direction
A recurring theme was the shift from hindsight to foresight. Reporting remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient. Senior leaders expect finance to provide perspective, context, and challenge.
Jo Malvern positioned this as a broader professional shift, where finance leaders are expected to engage with uncertainty and complexity, rather than wait for perfect information. This requires comfort with judgement and the confidence to advise when trade offs are unclear.
For CFOs, this means leaning into ambiguity, asking better questions, and helping leadership teams understand what matters most, even when the answer is not obvious.
Commercial understanding builds strategic credibility
The discussion repeatedly returned to commercial awareness as a core capability. Strategic CFOs invest time in understanding how the business really operates, how value is created, where risk accumulates, and which assumptions drive performance.
Chris Naisby shared that leading through periods of expansion and refinancing required deep engagement with operational realities, not just financial models. That proximity enables finance to challenge constructively and support growth without becoming a blocker.
Commercial credibility also strengthens influence. When stakeholders recognise that finance understands their pressures, finance insight is invited earlier into decisions, rather than applied at approval stage.
Leadership beyond finance requires trust and presence
The session highlighted that strategic leadership is built through relationships as much as expertise. CFOs who lead beyond the numbers are visible, consistent, and engaged across the organisation.
Jo Malvern observed that modern finance leaders are increasingly expected to act as organisational stewards, balancing short term performance with longer term resilience. That expectation extends beyond the finance function and into culture, talent, and governance.
Trust is earned through reliability and openness. When finance is seen as a partner rather than a gatekeeper, its influence naturally expands.
Technology supports judgement, it does not replace it
While technology featured in the discussion, it was framed as an enabler rather than a solution in its own right. Systems and automation can improve efficiency and data quality, but they do not remove the need for judgement.
The speakers agreed that the real value comes when technology frees time for analysis, dialogue, and decision support. Without changes in behaviour and ways of working, tools alone do not deliver strategic impact.
For CFOs, the opportunity lies in using technology to elevate the finance conversation, not just accelerate existing processes.
What good looks like, practical actions for finance leaders
This session translated into several practical signals and actions for CFOs and senior finance leaders.
Questions to ask yourself- Am I primarily reporting results, or shaping future decisions
- Where does finance insight change the direction of a discussion
- Do senior stakeholders seek my perspective early, or late
- How well do I understand the operational drivers behind the numbers
- Where could technology release time for higher value work
- Finance involvement at the start of strategic initiatives
- Board discussions that focus on options and trade offs, not just outcomes
- Constructive challenge from finance that is welcomed, not resisted
- Strong alignment between financial insight and commercial reality
- Equating influence with control
- Relying on data without context
- Staying too close to reporting at the expense of leadership
- Assuming technology alone will elevate finance’s role
What good looks like in practice
A strategic CFO is trusted to frame decisions, not just validate them. They bring clarity to complexity, connect financial insight to organisational purpose, and help leaders navigate uncertainty with confidence.
Conclusion, leading beyond the numbers is a mindset shift
The session reinforced that becoming a strategic CFO is not about abandoning financial discipline. It is about extending it into leadership, judgement, and influence.
By combining strong technical foundations with commercial understanding, trusted relationships, and effective use of technology, CFOs can move beyond reporting and become central to shaping the future of their organisations.
Speakers
Editor in chief of ACCA’s Accounting and Business magazines, leading global coverage of trends shaping the finance profession.
CFO, Watergate Bay Hotel Limited. Experienced CFO with a background spanning IPOs, M&A, refinancing and growth, currently leading strategy and expansion within the hospitality sector.