The Road to CFO: What No One Tells You Early On

So you want to be a CFO. Maybe you’re a few years into your finance career, smart, driven, and already thinking three steps ahead. You've read the job descriptions, scrolled past the titles on LinkedIn, and wondered what it really takes to rise through the ranks and earn a seat at the table.

Here’s the truth we’ve learned after decades in the seat and in the boardroom: becoming a CFO isn’t a formula. It’s a journey. And it’s as much about who you are as what you know.

To begin with, you need to master the basics. Build fluency in accounting, FP&A, and core financial operations. These fundamentals are essential because they teach discipline, structure, and the precision that every strong financial leader needs. But that’s just the start. The modern CFO must go beyond the spreadsheet and understand the business end to end. That means grasping how product development, marketing strategy, customer experience, and even HR tie into capital planning and financial performance. To add real strategic value, you must be more than a scorekeeper. You must become a business thinker.

Just as important is the ability to translate between the language of finance and the language of business. It’s not enough to report results. You have to synthesize them, contextualize them, and communicate them clearly and persuasively to people who don’t live in Excel or PowerPoint. Practice this early in your career. When you're analyzing data, always ask yourself what it means, what action it suggests, and how you can best explain that to others. This is where your value starts to show up, not in the numbers themselves but in what you help people do with them.

Range also matters. There’s no single path to the CFO role. Some start in audit, others in banking, and some in consulting or operations. What matters most is gaining experience across functions, teams, and business models. Try to see both chaos and scale. Work at a startup and at a large enterprise if you can. The former will teach you how to build from scratch. The latter will teach you how to optimize and navigate complexity. Both are invaluable. The more you’ve seen, the more resilient and resourceful you’ll become. And resilience is one of a CFO’s most important traits.

But here’s the piece that often gets overlooked: soft skills. You can’t become a great CFO without learning how to navigate people. Communication, empathy, judgment, and diplomacy are not nice to haves. They are mission critical. You need to know how to read a room, when to speak up, how to say hard things well, and how to deliver truth without ego. More than that, you need to build trust. Becoming a true partner to the CEO and management team takes years of consistent behavior: listening more than you talk, showing up prepared, defusing tension, and being the calmest person in the room when others are panicking. Early in your career, begin developing those muscles. Run meetings. Ask for feedback. Practice clarity. People will remember how you made them feel, especially when stakes are high.

At the same time, the finance function itself is transforming. Automation, predictive analytics, and AI are reshaping how decisions are made and what gets prioritized. AI is not something to fear. It is something to learn. The CFOs of tomorrow will not be defined by what they automate but by what they do with that automation. Knowing how to leverage AI-driven tools, integrate them into workflows, and apply predictive insights to strategic planning will soon be table stakes. This means upskilling now. Get curious about the tools. Learn Power BI, Python, GPT, and others. Learn to collaborate with data science teams. Understand the ethics and risks of algorithmic decisions. In the near future, AI fluency won’t be a competitive advantage. It will be a basic requirement.

And of course, your reputation is everything. Build it patiently. Be known for showing up, following through, and asking the right questions. In finance, you will often be privy to sensitive and high-stakes conversations. Your discretion, consistency, and steadiness will be remembered. Your brand is your currency. Don’t burn it on shortcuts.

Finally, never forget that being a CFO is not about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about helping others succeed. It’s a leadership role, not a math problem. You’re not just analyzing numbers. You’re shaping strategy, building teams, guiding founders, and serving as a voice of reason in the room. That requires judgment, courage, and perspective. It requires you to grow beyond your technical expertise and step fully into leadership.

At RoseMehl, we’ve each taken different roads to the C-suite. But one thing unites us: we know that the CFO role is earned not just through credentials but through character. So if you’re early in your journey, don’t just chase the title. Chase wisdom. Chase range. Chase the kinds of experiences that make people say, “I want to work with them.”

Because the best CFOs aren’t just great at finance. They’re great at people .And they’re ready for what’s next.