If your finance function only works because of one person, you don’t have a function. You have fragility.
Ever had a Financial Controller who runs everything?
Month-end happens, but it’s heroic. There’s no documentation because ‘there wasn’t time’. You can’t delegate because nobody else can pick it up. Your process didn’t grow around the system… it grew around that person. Like ivy wrapping itself around a single post. Pull the post out and the whole thing collapses.
Then the FC goes off sick.
Payments stall. Close slips. Cashflow becomes guesswork. The CEO blames finance. Your credibility takes a hit. And suddenly everyone can see how fragile the function really is.
This is dependency risk. And in lean, scaling finance teams, it’s everywhere.
How dependency builds (and why nobody notices)
Dependency risk doesn’t arrive with a warning label. It builds slowly, and for perfectly understandable reasons.
You hire someone talented. They’re capable, tenacious, willing to take ownership. They pick things up quickly and soon become the go-to person for anything that matters. They’re the engine of the team. Brilliant.
But over time, processes shape around them. Their knowledge becomes the process. Their way of building the model becomes the only way. Their relationships with stakeholders become the finance function’s relationships. The documentation that should exist doesn’t, because they’re too busy doing the work to write it down.
And everyone is fine with this… right up until they’re not there.
The thing about dependency risk is that it often looks like a strength. ‘We’ve got someone who holds the whole thing together.’ That feels like an asset. Until you realise that ‘holding the whole thing together’ means nobody else can. You’ve built the machine with one irreplaceable cog. And cogs, eventually, wear down.
The golden hire trap
There’s a version of this I see regularly. Your most capable, most tenacious team member. Real succession material. Incredibly hungry, but unable to say ‘no’. They take on whatever you throw at them. More responsibility? No problem. Extra project? Sure. Weekend work? Already on it.
They’re the person you’d clone if you could. And that’s precisely the problem.
Burnout quietly creeps in. Errors start to get missed. Small things at first, then bigger ones. Until eventually the person you’ve depended on the most becomes the source of the miss you can’t afford.
And the painful part is… it’s rarely their fault. The dependency was designed into the system. They were given too much, with too little support, for too long. The business rewarded the heroics rather than fixing the structure. You watered the ivy instead of building a proper frame.
What dependency risk actually costs
Holiday creates panic. Not because the team can’t cope, but because one person holds the keys to all the knowledge. The FC is on annual leave and nobody knows how to run the payment run. The FP&A Manager is off sick and the board pack can’t be produced. The Management Accountant who reconciles the key revenue account is on maternity leave and nobody was trained on how it works.
These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They’re conversations I have with CFOs regularly.
The cost goes beyond operational disruption. It’s the CEO asking ‘why are we so dependent on one person?’ and the CFO not having a good answer. It’s the board questioning whether the finance function is fit for the next stage of growth. It’s the investor asking whether there’s a succession plan for the FC, and the honest answer being ‘no, but we should probably sort that out’. That’s never a comfortable sentence to say out loud in a board meeting.
And then there’s the cost to the person themselves. Being the single point of failure is exhausting. It’s lonely. It’s a one-way ticket to burnout. And the best people eventually leave. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re tired of carrying the weight alone. They don’t hand in their notice on the bad days. They hand it in on the day they realise the bad days aren’t going to stop.
The early warning signs
Dependency risk has some obvious tells.
You can’t give someone a week off without worrying about what falls through the cracks. If someone’s annual leave makes your stomach tighten, that’s your signal.
There’s a process or a system that only one person understands. If you asked them to write it down, it would take days… and they’d tell you they don’t have time. They’re probably right, which is part of the problem.
Cross-training keeps getting pushed back. ‘We’ll do it when things calm down.’ I’ve been in recruitment for over 15 years. Things never calm down.
Knowledge lives in someone’s head, not in a system. The model, the reconciliation, the investor report, the banking relationship… it all runs through one person.
You’ve got a team member who works significantly longer hours than everyone else. Not because they’re inefficient, but because they’re the only one who can do what they do. That’s not commitment. That’s a structural problem wearing a dedication costume.
What to do about it
The fix isn’t about removing talented people. It’s about building the function around outcomes, not around an individual.
Start with a simple exercise: if each member of your team was unavailable for two weeks, what would break? That’s your dependency map. And it should worry you.
Document the critical processes. Not 50-page SOPs that nobody reads, but simple, practical handover guides that someone competent could pick up and run with. If it takes longer than a page to explain, break it into smaller steps.
Cross-train deliberately, not when it’s convenient. Build it into the operating rhythm so it happens regardless of how busy things are.
And redesign the structure so that no single person is the linchpin. That might mean splitting responsibilities, adding a deputy, or changing how work flows through the team. It won’t happen overnight, but every small step reduces the fragility.
The business shouldn’t depend on a person. It should depend on a function that runs without heroics.
Where are the single points of failure in yours?
• • •
Dependency risk is one of five human risks that quietly turn into commercial risk.
I’ve created a free scorecard to help you map where your finance team is most fragile. Takes less than 3 minutes, and it’ll show you exactly where the single points of failure are sitting.
