Questions to Ask a CFO of a Company
For anyone who gets time with a company's finance chief: an employee, a junior finance colleague, a student or a supplier. Twenty questions on where the money goes, how spending gets approved, which numbers move the business, what makes month-end slow, how to write a business case that survives, and how they got into the job.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What does the finance team spend most of its time on?
Why ask it
The honest answer is usually processing rather than analysis, and it explains why your request sat in a queue for a fortnight. It also shows what would have to change before finance can be a partner rather than a checkpoint.
Which single number, if it moved by a tenth, would change the most around here?
Why ask it
Forces one answer, and it is often not revenue: it might be churn, gross margin, utilisation or days to collect. Whatever they name is the number your own work should be able to trace itself back to.
How does a spending request actually get approved?
Why ask it
Ask about thresholds, forms and who signs, because the real process is rarely the one in the policy document. Most requests are refused for being in the wrong format or arriving in the wrong week rather than for being bad ideas.
Roughly how do our costs break down, and how much of it is people?
Why ask it
In most companies people are the majority of the cost base, which reframes every conversation about efficiency. If they cannot give you a rough split without a spreadsheet, the reporting is probably slower than it should be.
Which part of the business is more profitable than people assume, and which part less?
Why ask it
This is where a finance chief knows something almost nobody else does. Expect the unglamorous product to be paying for the interesting one, which explains several decisions that look irrational from the inside.
What do you wish the rest of the company understood about cash?
Why ask it
Profit and cash diverge constantly, and the confusion between them causes real arguments about hiring and payment terms. Ask for the specific example that annoys them most and you will get a short lesson worth having.
How do you decide between investing in something and taking the profit now?
Why ask it
Gets at the actual capital allocation logic, including who the company is answerable to. The answer tells you whether a two-year payback is fundable here or a waste of everyone's afternoon.
What surprised you in the last set of accounts?
Why ask it
Surprise is the most interesting thing that happens in reporting, and it is specific enough to get a real answer. Nothing surprised me either means an unusually stable business or that the variances are not being examined.
What do you do when a business case has numbers you don't believe?
Why ask it
Useful if you ever plan to submit one. Look for whether they send it back, adjust it themselves, or approve it with a condition attached, because that is what will happen to yours.
What's in the numbers the board sees that the rest of us don't?
Why ask it
Phrased so they can answer at whatever level of detail they are allowed. Usually the difference is not secrecy but framing: cash, covenants, and a forecast for the next two quarters rather than the last one.
How long does month-end take, and what makes it slow?
Why ask it
The bottleneck is nearly always somebody else's input: timesheets, supplier invoices, stock counts. If your team is one of the causes, you have just found a cheap way to be useful to finance.
Which report do you actually use to run your own week?
Why ask it
Nearly always a much shorter document than the official pack, and often a single page or a spreadsheet they maintain themselves. Asking to see it teaches you more about the business than a quarter of all-hands slides.
What financial risk takes up most of your attention?
Why ask it
Answers range from customer concentration to a debt maturity to currency exposure, and it is rarely what employees assume. It also tells you which kinds of decisions will meet unexpected resistance.
What's the most common mistake managers make in a budget submission?
Why ask it
Practical and easy to answer, and you will hear the same two or three faults every time: no phasing, headcount hidden in a contractor line, no view of what happens if the money is refused.
If I wanted a business case of mine to get approved, what should it contain?
Why ask it
Asks for a template rather than a philosophy, and most finance chiefs will happily give you one. Expect the emphasis to be on cash timing and on what is being stopped to pay for it.
How does the company think about pricing?
Why ask it
Pricing is the fastest lever on profit and the one most companies leave alone for years. Whether finance, product or sales holds the pen here tells you where power actually sits.
What did your own route into this job look like?
Why ask it
The paths vary widely between audit, banking, financial planning and operational finance, and each produces a different kind of finance chief. The gaps they mention having had to fill are the practical part of the answer.
Which skills matter more in your job now than they did ten years ago?
Why ask it
Gets a concrete answer about systems, data work and communication rather than a general observation about change. Useful if you are deciding what to learn next.
What would you tell someone three or four years into a finance career?
Why ask it
Specific enough to avoid platitudes, and the advice usually involves getting close to operations or to the customer rather than deeper into technical work. Ask what they would have done differently themselves.
What should people stop bringing you?
Why ask it
A good closing question, and the answer is a small gift: approvals that should be handled elsewhere, problems with no options attached, spreadsheets instead of a decision to make.
Getting a useful conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Read something first
For a listed company, the last annual report and the most recent results presentation are public and take an hour. For a private one, the internal board pack summary or whatever your intranet publishes will do. Arriving with one specific observation, even a wrong one, changes the conversation entirely: you will be corrected, and being corrected is how you learn where the sensitivities are.
Talking finance without pretending
- If you are unsure of a term, ask what it means in this company rather than in general. Contribution, margin and bookings are all defined differently in different places.
- Bring one number of your own: your team's cost, your project's spend, the revenue you touch. It gives the conversation an anchor.
- Ask about the mechanism rather than the philosophy. How does a request get approved gets you a process; what is your approach to spending gets you a paragraph.
- Do not argue with a figure in the room. Ask where it comes from and check afterwards, since the source is usually a system you can look at yourself.
What they will not tell you
- At a listed company, anything unpublished about results, forecasts or deals is off limits, and asking puts them in an awkward position.
- Individual salaries, redundancy plans and specific customer contract terms will not be discussed.
- Detailed covenant headroom is often confidential even internally. Ask about the type of risk rather than the number.
- A deflection is not rudeness. Note what was deflected, since the pattern tells you where the pressure is.
Adjusting to the setting
You work there and want to be useful
Lead with the questions about approvals, budget submissions and what to stop bringing them. Then act on one of the answers within the month and say so in a single line of email.
You are early in a finance career
Ask to see the one-page report they actually use, and ask what they would learn next in your position. Both requests are flattering and produce concrete answers.
You are a student or researcher
Send one question in advance and keep the rest about specific decisions rather than opinions. Ask about a choice that turned out badly and what changed afterwards.
You are a supplier or adviser
Skip anything that sounds like discovery for a sales process. The questions about cash, approvals and what surprised them in the last accounts will tell you more, and asking them well is the only pitch that lands in a first meeting.