Questions to Ask Finance Professionals
Questions for a short informational conversation with someone working in finance, whether in banking, investment management, corporate finance, accounting or advisory. Written for students, career changers and anyone deciding which corner of the industry to aim at.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What does your firm get paid for, and by whom?
Why ask it
The revenue model determines almost everything about the job: who you answer to, what counts as good work, and how secure the seat is. Advisory fees, a management fee on assets, carried interest and a salary funded from operating budget produce four very different working lives.
Can you walk me through yesterday?
Why ask it
Asking about one real day gets you specifics instead of a job description. Note how much of it was meetings, how much was in a spreadsheet, and how much was chasing other people for information, because the last category is usually larger than anyone expects.
How many hours was last week, and was that a normal week?
Why ask it
Two numbers are more informative than any discussion of balance, and asking about a specific week makes it harder to give the polished answer. Follow up on what makes a bad week bad, because in most finance roles it is a predictable calendar event rather than random overload.
What part of the job would surprise someone outside finance?
Why ask it
This is an easy question to answer well and it usually produces the most memorable thing in the conversation. Answers often involve how little modeling and how much coordination the senior roles involve.
How much of your work is judgment, and how much is following a process someone else designed?
Why ask it
The ratio changes enormously by seniority and by sector, and it is the honest version of asking whether the work is interesting. Early roles in audit, transaction services and reporting sit heavily on the process side, which is fine if you know it going in.
What separates the people who last from the people who leave in the first two years?
Why ask it
The answer is rarely technical skill. Expect accuracy under time pressure, tolerance for revision, and willingness to say when something is wrong, and notice whether they describe traits or behaviors you could actually practice.
Which qualification actually moved your career, and which one turned out to be noise?
Why ask it
Asking about both sides gets you an honest ranking instead of an endorsement of everything they hold. The value of a CFA, an accounting qualification or an MBA varies sharply by sector and by country, and people inside a sector know which one their employer really counts.
How does promotion work at your firm, and roughly how many people at your level get through?
Why ask it
Some finance careers run on a fixed-term pyramid where most people are expected to leave, and others promote on availability. Which structure you are entering matters more than the starting salary.
How is pay structured at your level, between base, bonus and anything deferred?
Why ask it
Structure is a fair question where an exact figure is not. Deferred stock, clawbacks, and a bonus that is most of total pay all change how much freedom you have to leave, which is the part people underestimate at twenty-two.
What is the hiring market like for someone with your profile right now?
Why ask it
People are usually candid about their own market because it is a fact rather than an opinion about you. It also tells you whether the area you are targeting is expanding or quietly shedding people.
Where do people from your team go when they leave?
Why ask it
Exit options are the real return on an entry-level finance job, and they differ enormously: some seats open doors to industry, investing or founding something, and some lead only to the same seat elsewhere. If nobody can name where leavers went, that is an answer too.
What did you get wrong in your first couple of years, and what did it cost?
Why ask it
Specific mistakes in finance are instructive because the failure modes repeat: a broken link in a model that reached a client, a deadline missed because nobody flagged a dependency. Asking about cost rather than lesson keeps the answer concrete.
When did you last have to tell a client or a senior person something they did not want to hear?
Why ask it
This gets at whether the culture tolerates pushback, which is the single best predictor of whether you will be comfortable there. A long pause before the answer usually means the culture does not.
How did the last big market or rate move change your actual day?
Why ask it
It grounds an abstract question about markets in their real work: deals repriced, refinancings pulled forward, redemptions to fund, covenants to renegotiate. It also shows you which parts of finance are cyclical in a way that affects headcount.
Where in your work is the fee clearly earned, and where is it harder to justify?
Why ask it
A senior person who can answer this honestly is worth listening to on everything else. It is also the fastest way to learn which activities in their sector are under structural pressure from fee compression or automation.
What do people at your level worry about that juniors never think about?
Why ask it
The shift is usually from getting the work right to bringing in the work, or from analysis to accountability for other people's errors. Knowing what the job becomes matters more than knowing what it starts as.
What have you given up to keep doing this?
Why ask it
Ask it late, and only if the conversation has been warm. The answers tend to be concrete, a city they wanted to live in, years of weekends, a relationship, and they are the part of the trade-off that recruitment materials never mention.
Which of your skills would transfer if you left finance, and which would not?
Why ask it
This is the question that separates people who feel they have options from people who feel trapped by their compensation. The answer tells you a lot about how portable the career you are considering actually is.
If you were starting now, which part of finance would you go into?
Why ask it
Almost nobody names their own path unchanged, and the reasons they give, where the fees are moving, where the headcount is growing, what they wish they had learned earlier, are the useful content. Push for why rather than accepting the name of a sector.
Who else should I talk to, and may I say you suggested them?
Why ask it
Asking permission to use their name turns a vague suggestion into an introduction you can actually act on. It is also the easiest favor they can grant, which is why it belongs at the end of a short first conversation.
Setting up and running the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting the meeting
- 1Ask for fifteen or twenty minutes on a call, and say why you picked them specifically. Requests that could have been sent to a hundred people get answered like they were.
- 2Alumni networks, former colleagues of your parents' generation, and people two or three years ahead of you have the highest response rates. Managing directors have the lowest and the least useful answers for someone starting out.
- 3Say plainly that you are not asking for a job. It removes the main reason people ignore these messages.
- 4Offer two specific times rather than asking when suits. Finance calendars are dense and open-ended requests slide.
- 5Send a one-line reminder the morning of the call. Cancellation rates are high and nobody minds the nudge.
Structuring twenty minutes
Spend two minutes on yourself, not ten
Give a short version of where you are and what you are trying to decide, then stop. The value of the call is in their answers, and people who spend half of it explaining themselves get a polite non-conversation.
Pick five questions, not twenty
Choose one about the firm's economics, one about a real day, one about progression or pay structure, one about mistakes or pushback, and one closing question. Anything more and you will be racing, which is worse than covering less.
Ask the money question in the middle
Questions about pay structure and progression land fine once the conversation has warmed up and badly as an opener. Never ask for their own number; ask how pay is put together at their level, which is a professional question rather than a personal one.
End at the time you asked for
Say that you are conscious of the twenty minutes and ask whether they have time for one more. Most will say yes, and the ones who do not will remember that you noticed.
Adjust for where they work
- Investment banking and advisory: ask about deal cycles, staffing, and how work is allocated between teams. Hours and predictability are the live issues.
- Investment management: ask what they are measured against, over what period, and how much of their day is research versus client reporting.
- Private capital: ask about the split between diligence, portfolio work and fundraising, and how carried interest actually vests for someone at their level.
- Corporate finance and FP&A: ask about the close, the planning cycle and how much influence finance has on decisions. The pace and the ceiling are both different from the sell side.
- Accounting and audit: ask about busy season by name, the qualification timetable, and what people move into afterward.
- Do not carry conclusions from one of these across to another. Advice from a hedge fund analyst and advice from a group controller are often opposites and both correct.
What not to ask
- Do not ask for investment advice, a view on a specific stock, or what to do with your own money. Many people in finance are barred from answering, and asking marks you as not understanding their obligations.
- Do not ask about live deals, clients, or anything unannounced. They will decline and the rest of the conversation gets more guarded.
- Do not ask what they earn. Ask how pay is structured at their level instead.
- Do not send a CV in the first message. If the conversation goes well you can ask at the end whether it is worth sending one.
- Do not ask questions their firm's website answers. Read the strategy page and the last annual report before the call.
Afterward
- Reply within a day naming one thing you are going to do differently because of what they said.
- If they suggested someone, contact that person within a week and tell the original contact you did.
- Keep a short note per conversation: sector, hours, pay structure, exit routes, and their honest recommendation. After five or six conversations the pattern across them is more useful than any single call.
- Come back in six months with an update rather than another list of questions. That is what turns a favor into a contact.