AMA - Finance Director

Why, what you ask if given the chance?

I very much doubt any FD/CFO of substance would want to expose themselves to such a grilling. Because no matter how they answer, people will draw unwarranted conclusions etc....

You could always just by a share in a company and go along to the AGM...

The entire trainee system is based on the assumption that you won't be hanging around, so no one will be surprised if you are looking else where, if you are one of those they intend to keep, you'll probably already know that. Cheap smart labour is after all the name of the game.

Depending on the size of the company if you are the CFO/FD, you can expect to have very little to do with the nuts and bolts of the accounting profession. They mainly concentrate on financial policy issues, the general management the company and being the public face of the company. As a general rule the higher you go in a company the less specific and the more general the roles become.

As for the skills required, well if you have a professional accounting qualification, you probably have all the technical skills needed adding knowledge from another management discipline might be an idea to look into. Probably the most important skill you need to have is that you need to be a good politician. And I don't mean that in a negative way. You do need to be good with people, you need to understand their concerns, be a good public speaker, be able to think a few steps a head so you don't put your foot in your mouth etc. Most senior politicians would most likely make it in the corporate world as well and vice versa. You basically need to like people and for many in the accounting profession it's no a good match. I worked at a big 4 back in the day and one of the questions my partner used to ask when evaluating final year trainees with a view to keeping them on, was: is he/she someone that we can let loose on the general public? And very often the answer was no. That is why you often find technical partners and business partners in a firm, some draw the clients in and the others service the clients that are pulled in.

The work experience at small companies is very different than at a large multinational, especially if you are at the European or global HQ that is for sure. The bigger the company the more anonymous you are, at least until you reach the higher levels or are involved in a critical project, some people like that and some prefer a more family type of environment were everyone knows everyone. On the other hand if your are at the HQ of a major multinational then things like world events become a real thing - the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a major headache for one of the companies i was doing consulting work for as they had a lot of customers there and had to figure out how to get paid! It even came down to bartering crude oil for cotton which was then converted to garments in Egypt and sold to settle the debt.

You should look at your accounting qualification as a starting point, not an end point - it can take you in many different directions, a lot depends on what interests you and the opportunities that crop up along the way. My advice would be to pick an area that interests you as you will be doing it for a long time and see where it leads you to... it's very unlikely that you'll ever find your self on the bread line no matter which way you go.

In my case I resigned within weeks of qualifying to spend the summer climbing in the Swiss Alps and forgot to return to Ireland... This was in the 80s when computing was new and I was very interested in that area, so I got drawing in to using what used to be called AI to model credit risk in the chemical industry - many of the big players are head quartered in Basle. From there I got drawn banking and asset management doing things like modelling MBS products for the American market. Apart from one short period as a D at a European bank, I have worked freelance. And while the work was nerdy and terrible interesting to me, I also needed to be a people person - I needed to sell myself, feel comfortable speaking at boardroom level, be comfortable defending my advice and occasionally having to deliver the bad news. I retired at 55 and now just get involved in stuff that interests me.