Gartner reveals that just 22 percent of CFOs are personally effective; while most are overinvested in finance tasks

Only 22 percent of CFOs achieve a high degree of personal effectiveness, and Gartner Inc. research shows that a limited set of activities and relationships outside the finance department are the biggest contributors to a CFO’s personal effectiveness.

The research was based on more than 100 CFO interviews and it assessed CFO personal performance and effectiveness across 231 attributes to reveal what the most effective CFOs do differently with their time, relationships and teams.

Gartner determined CFO personal effectiveness based on how closely a CFO’s organization aligned to efficient growth behaviors, such as positive risk taking to drive long-term growth, as well as the CFO’s ability to meet CEO expectations around revenue growth, margin expansion, return on invested capital and balance sheet health.

As part of the analysis, Gartner studied the average weekly activities of CFOs and found that the average CFO lost one full day of work per week to ineffective activities. The largest misallocation was in how much time CFOs spent working within their own departments.

“CFOs want to reinvent their departments, keep their talent pipelines full and provide services more efficiently to internal business partners, so it’s not surprising that most respondents noted that managing these activities were a huge demand on their time,” said Mr. Nagy. “However, none of these activities, even if mastered, ultimately impacted how effective a CFO was in their overall job performance.”

Gartner found that there was no correlation between an organization’s size or industry in how effectively their CFO performed. Within the finance department, a CFO taking personal ownership of finance talent acquisition, mergers and acquisitions strategy, cost management or digital transformation also had no material impact in how effective the CFO was rated in overall job performance.

“CFOs tell us they have more demands than ever, but the surprise in this research is just how few activities differentiate the most successful operators from the rest of the pack,” said Peter Nagy, research vice president in Gartner Finance practice. “The most important relationships that drive high performance in the CFO role are found in the boardroom and where the customers are, not in the finance department.”