Why your best accountants can’t operate at the level the business now needs
Picture the scene. You’re the CFO of a PE-backed business. You’ve moved from founder-led chaos into board-level governance. The business has grown fast, the team has worked hard, and now the investors want rigour. Proper forecasting. Clear board packs. A finance function that can hold its own in the room.
Your team should be ready for this. They’ve been with you through the trenches. They’re technically excellent. Month-end is tight. The numbers are right.
But the forecast keeps missing. Not because the model is broken, but because nobody challenges the assumptions coming out of commercial. Your FP&A Manager reports what they’re given. Your Finance Business Partner avoids the difficult conversation with the Sales Director who’s overpromising on pipeline. The board pack lands on time… but nobody changes course.
So what happens? You step in. You challenge commercial yourself. You rewrite the narrative in the board pack. You present the forecast because the team can’t hold the room. You become the bottleneck, doing the work you hired your team to do.
PE start breathing down your neck for weekly cash and trading updates. Trust erodes. And the quiet thought you’ve been pushing away gets louder: this team can’t operate at the level the business now needs.
This is capability risk.
The CV looked perfect
And that’s the frustrating part. On paper, every box was ticked. The qualifications were right. The experience was relevant. The interview was strong.
But there’s a difference between someone who can close the books and someone who can shape decisions. Between someone who builds a model and someone who can stand in front of a commercial leader and challenge their assumptions with credibility and confidence.
I’ve watched this play out dozens of times over the past 15 years. A CFO hires well for the business they had. Then the business changes. PE comes in. The board expectations shift. And the team that got you here can’t get you there.
The qualifications haven’t changed. The people haven’t changed. But the pressure has. And pressure reveals what a CV can’t.
Stage-fit matters more than CV-fit
Someone who was brilliant in a stable, process-driven FTSE 250 can crumble in a PE-backed scale-up where everything is ambiguous, the data is messy, and the founder changes direction on a Tuesday.
The skills that made them successful in one environment don’t automatically transfer to another. Accuracy doesn’t equal influence. Technical depth doesn’t equal commercial challenge. Ten years in a large corporate doesn’t prepare you for the pace and ambiguity of a £30m investor-backed business that’s growing 40% year on year.
And yet, this is exactly how most finance hiring works. Match the CV to the spec. Tick the boxes. Assume the experience will translate.
It often doesn’t.
What this actually looks like day-to-day
The commercial impact is rarely obvious at first. It creeps in gradually.
Your FP&A Manager produces a 40-page board pack that nobody reads. Not because it’s wrong, but because the narrative doesn’t connect the numbers to the ‘so what’. The data is all there, but the decision it should trigger isn’t.
Your Finance Business Partner can’t handle stakeholder pushback. So the sales team start to question whether they really care about driving revenue, or whether they just want to protect their own position. Commercial takes a back road the next time they want decision support. They start selling contracts that burn a hole in your margin.
Your Management Accountant delivers perfectly formatted reports but can’t explain what the numbers mean to a non-finance stakeholder. The conversation never happens. The decision gets made without finance in the room.
None of these are bad people. None of them are bad accountants. They’re in the wrong seat for this stage of business.
And the CFO ends up carrying the weight. Stepping in to translate. Stepping in to challenge commercial. Stepping in to present to the board. Heavy is the head that wears the crown… and it gets heavier when the team beneath you can’t carry their share.
The early warning signs
Capability risk has some clear tells if you know where to look.
Your board pack is accurate but gets minimal engagement. Nobody asks questions. Not because it’s clear, but because it’s not landing.
Your team avoids difficult stakeholder conversations. They’ll send an email rather than pick up the phone. They’ll report the data rather than interpret it.
Commercial starts routing around finance. They go to you directly, or worse, they stop asking altogether and make decisions without the numbers.
Your forecast keeps missing. Not because the model is wrong, but because nobody is challenging the inputs coming from the business.
You find yourself doing work that should sit two levels below you. And you tell yourself it’s temporary, that things will settle down. They rarely do.
What to do about it
The fix here isn’t a training course. And it isn’t about being harsh with good people who’ve given you their best.
It starts with being honest about what the seat actually requires at this stage of the business. Not a generic job description. Not what the role looked like two years ago. What does ‘good’ look like under this specific pressure, with this board, at this pace of growth?
Then pressure-test whether the person in the seat can deliver that. Can they translate numbers into language the business can act on? Can they challenge commercial with credibility, not just data? Can they hold the room when you’re not in it?
And if the answer is no, be willing to make the hard call. Not because the person has failed, but because the business has outgrown the seat they were hired into. That’s not a reflection on them, it’s a reflection on what the business now demands. If you leave someone in a seat that isn’t right for them, you’re also letting them down.
Capability risk is rarely about bad people. More often, the business has simply outgrown the seat they were hired into. And recognising that early enough to do something about it… that’s the bit most CFOs wish they’d done sooner.
Have you ever inherited a team that looked right on paper but couldn’t operate at the level the business needed?
Capability risk is just one of the five.
I’ve put together a free scorecard that helps you pressure-test where your finance team is most exposed across all five human risk areas. It takes less than 3 minutes. It’ll show you where the stage-fit gaps are hiding before they become the board’s next question…
