what to expect interviewing with a chief financial officer

Choosing a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for your executive squad is one of the most of import hiring decisions you lot volition make for your company. It is crucial to detect someone you lot trust because, in add-on to leading your finance and bookkeeping squad, this person volition act every bit a strategic fiscal advisor to your C-suite. This ways yous need a great ready of CFO interview questions that will help y'all gain insight into each candidate's management way, ability to run into the big picture, and aptitude for making audio financial decisions.

Every bit a partial CFO and accounting services provider, I often coach clients through such interviews and sometimes provide executive search services. And this makes sense because when my team succeeds, our clients achieve their goals, graduate from our services, and go on to hire full-time employees. So, whether you're looking for your showtime fractional CFO, a full-time rent, or are but a budding CFO preparing for an interview, the questions below are sure to be useful.

What Qualities Brand a Good CFO?

Since the CFO must build, manage, and lead your visitor's financial team, you lot must look for someone with a finance and accounting groundwork. Nonetheless, in my view, this is but the "minimum viable product" that is a CFO. While you should absolutely prepare CFO interview questions to reveal any inadequacies, yous volition become most of what you demand from the candidate'due south resume and screening interviews.

More than importantly, the CFO position is responsible for your financial strategy. And this volition vary depending on your manufacture, the size of your organization, your setup, and the company's plans. Therefore, I would encourage you to focus on whether the CFO in question tin help your company get from point A to B. In other words, yous need a CFO who tin can examine your plans from a financial perspective, has stiff problem-solving skills, and is passionate almost your manufacture and what y'all exercise.

For more detail, check out our article titled "What Does a CFO Practice?," but you came here for CFO interview questions, then let'southward become to it.

Questions to Enquire a CFO in an Interview

Every bit I am certain y'all know, about companies engage a squad of people in the hiring process. The executive search firm or head of Hr will develop a gear up of questions designed to weed out candidates who are unlikely to succeed. This might be due to legalities, a lack of certain skills, an unwillingness to relocate or travel, or fifty-fifty their bacon requirements. We don't plan to embrace such questions here.

Every bit candidates move on to speak to others in the organization the questions should be quite unlike. They should be wide, open-ended questions designed to assist y'all understand if this person would be a good fit. For instance, the CEO will aim to determine if this person would be a strong partner and advisor in their quest to lead the visitor. The Controller, on the other hand, will be more interested in the candidate'southward management style and may dig deep into whatsoever technical requirements

To that stop, below are some CFO interview questions to consider. For your convenience, y'all can likewise download these questions every bit a Word document.

Warm-Up Questions

Interviews can be uncomfortable if you don't establish a good rapport, so get-go with a few piece of cake questions. This can be as simple every bit asking about a common connection or for clarification about the candidate'due south background with questions like:

1. I run across you worked at XYZ visitor. What did you lot enjoy near your time there?
2. Why are you looking for a new opportunity?
3. What do you find compelling almost this function?

These questions will provide insight into what the candidate values in an system and position, while putting them at ease. Then you can tell them more than nigh what you are seeking before launching into harder questions.

Download:

Test Your Financial Confidence

After partnering with over 100 clients, we've identified xi essential questions to aid business leaders brand more confident business concern decisions.

Questions to Reveal a Candidate's Strategic Leadership Skills

As I mentioned earlier, the office of a CFO is very strategic, so a CFO candidate should emphasize the large flick, long-term view. They should be able to explain what they have washed (or would expect to do) to support a company's vision and goals as put along by the CEO, board of directors, and executive team.

Every bit you listen to the candidate'south answers, wait for insight into how they accomplished their goals and how they piece of work, not only every bit an individual contributor, but as a leader. I find it helps to ask a full general question outset. Then, apply that context to dive into their past, while guiding them with follow-up questions.

4. Tell me well-nigh the deviation between growth and scale.
5. What take y'all done in the past to assist a company like ours abound and/or scale? What did y'all set out to accomplish? What hurdles did yous overcome to get there and how did you do it?
6. Which resource did you rely upon to reach your goals and to propel that visitor frontward?
7. Which of those resources existed already and what did you bring in?
8. How did yous manage or lead those resources?
9. How did you convince people that what you needed to do was the right thing to exercise?
10. What conflicts arose during that procedure (among people or between departments who may have been at cantankerous-purposes) and how did y'all resolve them?

If these questions aren't quite right for you, hither are a couple more:

11. Tell me about the financial roadmap for the last visitor you were at. For instance, when I started our balance canvas was like this and we wanted to sell the company in iii years. How did you lot do information technology? What did your roadmap look like and how did you help steer the send?
12. Pick a company where yous've worked before and tell me about their vision. What was the vision when you started at that company? How did you help them accomplish it? Or, if you didn't achieve that vision, why not and what could you have done differently?

"What could you lot have done differently?" is a fantastic follow-upwardly question. Virtually of united states accept a failure or 2 in our background and that's fine, even expected. What matters is how you deal with such failures. A strong candidate volition have a growth mindset and will learn from every situation.

When yous have exhausted your questions most the CFO's past, you can enquire them to apply a similar thought process to your organization. A motivated candidate volition take done their homework and will come prepared to address questions such as:

13. Walk me through your process of how you might grow a company like ours from $v million to $50 1000000 (or $50 1000000 to $100 million, whatever is relevant).
14. What challenges exercise you anticipate for a visitor in our growth stage?
15. Given what you know virtually this company, where do you think you could add value?
16. What practice you meet as the external risks to our company'south success?

The answer to this question nigh risks will help y'all approximate the candidate'southward industry feel and whether they understand the main drivers of your concern. They might cite regulatory concerns, climatic change, competition, or any number of other things.

17. At this visitor, we have a board and some of those board members are outside investors who sometimes have goals that differ from the goals of our company. For example, an investor might want to sell in three years, whereas the visitor may not. What have you done (or what would you do) in this situation? How would yous jitney our CEO toward the appropriate way to handle this?

The candidate's reply to this concluding question speaks to their investor and lath relations skills, which differ from other types of skills. Overall, however, these questions most strategy allow you to proceeds insight into the candidate's ability to anticipate and mitigate fiscal risk while keeping a company on rail to see its goals. They besides help you appraise the candidate's people and communication skills, disharmonize resolution abilities, forth with their financial direction and strategic leadership skills.

Team Direction and Leadership Interview Questions

Ultimately, the CFO is responsible for accurately reporting and analyzing the metrics that rails your company's financial success, but they cannot practice it lonely. In addition to interacting with your board, CEO, and others on your direction team, they will build and run your finance and accounting section. The post-obit CFO interview questions volition help you sympathise your candidate's prowess as a manager and leader.

18. Given what yous know about this company, tell me what you lot would imagine doing in the beginning 90 days? What would be your plan?
19. Give me an instance of what might be on the calendar for your weekly finance and accounting meeting?
20. How do y'all mentor your squad? What kind of professional development activities exercise you encourage and so you tin grow their skills, help them become better squad members, and guide them forrard in their careers?
21. What exercise you lot do to brand certain your team feels challenged, valued, and engaged?
22. How do you go along your team in alignment with your visitor'southward changing goals and on track for meeting those goals?
23. How exercise y'all hold people accountable? Do you use a framework like RACI (responsibility consignment matrix), or practice yous prefer a unlike system to runway and manage your team's responsibilities?
24. What practise you do to drag yourself professionally? For instance, what networks do yous associate with and who do you talk to outside of piece of work to stay current and abreast of best practices?

A good CFO understands that employee turnover is costly and that the key to success is a good for you, motivated, and innovative workforce. So, these questions reveal how this person volition develop a winning squad that can grow with the visitor.

Questions to Explore Specialized Experience

Every CFO should have the skills to guide your company through budgeting, forecasting, revenue enhancement planning, taxation preparation, and (gulp) an audit. They should also be able to utilise your financial systems to pull financial reports, explore cash flow issues, and help you build a killer KPI dashboard. If you have big plans, still, such as a uppercase heighten or merger and conquering, find someone with relevant experience. For a merger and conquering, for instance, consider asking the post-obit questions:

25. Tell me about a time when you navigated a merger and acquisition issue for a visitor.
26. What kind of deal was it?
27. What worked, and what did not work?
28. If you were on the buy-side of the conquering, was it successful? If not, why not and what could you take done differently?
29. Similarly, if it was an exit, was information technology successful? Why or why non and how might you accept changed things?

Y'all volition probable have insight into what this person did in the past based on their resume or before interviews. The goal here, withal, is to find out what they did. If their answers are vague, or if they talk near what their team did, you tin state this every bit a follow-up question. "What did you personally do to make that happen?"

Cultural Fit Questions

You will become a sense of whether you would enjoy working with this person throughout your chat. Equally you wrap things upwards, however, you can ask a few concluding questions to reveal more than nearly the candidate'due south personality.

30. Tell me about the best CEO you've ever worked with.
31. Now, tell me about the worst CEO y'all've ever worked with.
32. If I were to option upwardly the phone tomorrow and ask your most recent CEO about their experience with y'all, what practice y'all think they would say?
33. What do you lot do for fun?
34. If you weren't a CFO, what exercise you recollect you would exercise to earn a living?
35. What are your career goals and aspirations?

CFO Interview Questions: The Lesser Line

Whether yous are looking for a fractional CFO service or a full-time CFO, the interview process is largely the same. And retrieve, leave time for the CFO to enquire their questions. Seek strong, passionate candidates who come to the interview prepared with relevant information nigh your visitor, stories about their accomplishments, and questions that demonstrate a want to detect an surround where they can thrive.

In the end, the right CFO is the one who leaves you feeling relieved and confident that you've establish a swell partner to guide your financial decisions.

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Source: https://theceosrighthand.co/cfo-interview-questions/

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