So, you’ve finally reached the top spot. You’ve earned that seat at the table, whether through years of proving yourself or because a founder saw something in you that a CV couldn’t capture. Either way, you’re here. Chief Financial Officer.
Your technical competence got you here. But that’s not what will keep you here. Suddenly, it’s about judgement, trust, and people decisions made under pressure. And the gap between ‘good at the numbers’ and ‘trusted by the business’ is where most CFO careers quietly stall.
The churn nobody talks about
CFO turnover is persistently high, and it’s getting worse. The Russell Reynolds CFO Turnover Index shows global CFO turnover hit 15.1% in 2024, with S&P 500 CFO turnover reaching 17.8%. Spencer Stuart’s analysis points to Fortune 500 CFO tenure sitting around 4.5 years, down from 4.9 years in 2018 and still trending downward. In private equity, it’s even sharper. Portfolio company CFOs average around 2.5 years in the seat, with the majority of departures happening within the first 18 months.
That’s a high churn signal for a supposedly stable executive role. And when you look at the reasons behind it, the pattern is consistent.
What’s actually driving it
Most CFO departures I see aren’t caused by technical gaps. They’re caused by human misalignment. The conversations I have with CFOs in transition tell a familiar story:
‘The founder doesn’t see the value of finance.’ ‘It’s like talking to a brick wall, my advice falls on deaf ears.’ ‘We’re not respected. Finance is seen as the blocker.’ ‘We’re too stretched, and the board won’t let me invest into my team.’ ‘The expectations are way beyond the reality.’
When you break these down, they signal a lack of influence, a brittle team, low transparency, or an over-dependency. Sure, you can get a CEO who’s a nightmare, and I’m not suggesting anyone should stay in a toxic environment. But more often than not, these things boil down to one human feeling. Trust. Or the absence of it.
The accountant’s dilemma
So why aren’t we talking about trust enough in finance? Accountants love things that are quantifiable. You can measure revenue, forecast accuracy, days sales outstanding, cash runway. But trust? Trust feels like one of those soft, unmeasurable things that gets filed in the ‘important but not urgent’ pile.
Except it isn’t unmeasurable. Not entirely.
The Trust Equation
While writing my book, I interviewed a CFO of a well-known footwear brand, who introduced me to something called ‘The Trust Equation’. It was originally developed by Charles H. Green, David Maister, and Robert Galford in their book The Trusted Advisor, and it offers a formula for trustworthiness that any finance leader can get their head around…
Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
Higher trust comes from strong credibility (your expertise, your knowledge, your ability to influence), reliability (your consistency, doing what you say you’ll do), and intimacy (emotional connection, the feeling of safety in sharing openly). Lower self-orientation (your focus on the business rather than your own ego or agenda) amplifies all three.
What I love about this is how it reframes the conversation. Trust isn’t only about being smart or dependable. Those are the numerator. It’s the denominator, self-orientation, that carries the most weight. Green himself puts it best: humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less.
For CFOs, that’s a powerful insight. You can be technically brilliant and deliver every report on time, but if people sense you’re playing for your own position rather than the business, the trust score collapses. The denominator wipes out everything above it. Like a perfectly tuned engine running on the wrong fuel.
Put yourself in the CEO’s shoes
Imagine your CEO is looking at you through the lens of this equation. How would they score you on each component?
Credibility: Does this person know their stuff? Is the board pack sharp? Are the assumptions clear? Do they speak with authority, or do they waffle?
Reliability: Do they deliver consistently? Are actions from meetings followed through? Is forecast accuracy improving? Or did they miss that one deliverable last month and hope nobody noticed?
Intimacy: Do they feel safe and straight with me? Will they admit uncertainty? Or are they still a bit guarded, choosing their words too carefully when the pressure is on?
Self-Orientation: Is it about the business, or about them? Are they focused on outcomes, or do they get defensive when the forecast is missed? Do they protect the team’s narrative, or their own?
Make it practical
Here’s something worth trying. Ask your board, your CEO, or your senior leadership team to score you out of 10 on each of those four observed behaviors over the past 90 days. Then run the equation: Trust Score = (C + R + I) / S.
The numbers will tell you something, but the variation will tell you more. Does the score differ from person to person? Is there trust fragmentation across the business? What does that tell you about your relationships? Are there common themes? Blind spots you hadn’t considered?
As a rough guide, a score below 5 needs work. Between 6 and 8 is solid, you’re in good shape but there’s always room to dig deeper. Above 8 and you’re onto something, but I’d urge you not to stop there. The nuance matters. A high score from the CEO but a low one from the commercial director tells a very different story to a consistent 7 across the board.
Where trust really lives
The Trust Equation won’t solve everything. It’s a lens, not a cure. But it does something that most conversations about CFO performance miss entirely. It puts language around the thing that actually keeps you in your seat or quietly pushes you out of it.
One thing i’ve observed over 15 years of sitting across the table from CFOs: the ones who last aren’t always the smartest in the room. They’re the ones who’ve figured out that trust is built in the small, consistent, human moments. The follow-through after a tough board meeting. The honesty when the forecast is off. The willingness to say ‘I don’t know yet, but here’s what I’m doing about it.’
Technical competence is the ticket to the table. Trust is what keeps your chair there.
So, what would your trust score be? And more importantly, would it match what you think it is?
