While there are many ways to get there, accounting is still a time-tested pathway to the CFO spot. Ron Wangerin began his career as an auditor for Deloitte before working as a CFO for tech companies, beauty companies, and online fundraising platform Classy, Inc. He’s now CFO at estate planning firm Trust & Will.

In a recent Campfire webinar, he talked about why CPA experience can be invaluable for someone who aspires to the CFO role. Here are some of his insights:

Why having an accounting background has made him a better CFO.

Accounting is the language of business. And ultimately the measurement system is, what are your financials at the end of the day?...Do you have a clean balance sheet? Is your P&L clean? Is your EBITDA accurate? Whatever those metrics are that you’re trying to peg…ultimately, it’s the financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP.

I always found having a good accounting background helps me in meetings, mostly to be able to guide the conversation or ask the questions so that we are going to get the right economic outcome that we’re expecting…whether that’s in an M&A situation where you’re doing real-time purchase accounting in your head and modeling the balance sheet in your head while you’re negotiating the purchase and sale agreement, or with a customer, particularly with software rev rec rules or SaaS rev rec rules. If you don’t have a good understanding of those, you may end up with a bunch of deferred revenue…But if you can address those in real time and explain them to your customer in real time…they’ll have a better understanding.

For more on the road from CPA to CFO, click here.—CV

What a difference a quarter makes.

Last quarter, CFOs’ biggest concerns were talent, monetary policy, and inflation, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. This quarter, tariffs and trade policy are what’s keeping them up at night.

Tariffs emerged as the top concern of the CFOs from 400 firms who took the survey, followed by inflation and monetary policy. Around 25% of CFOs said they planned to decrease hiring in response to tariffs, and 25% also said they’d cut capital spending. Though half said they weren’t making any changes to suppliers due to tariffs, 27% were making plans to diversify suppliers and 20% were accelerating purchases.

Respondents who were concerned about tariffs “had notably lower optimism, lower expectations for GDP growth, lower expectations for revenue and employment growth, and higher expectations for price growth in 2025,” Sonya Ravindranath Waddell, VP and economist at the Richmond Fed, said in a press release.

CFOs’ optimism about the economy rose last quarter, partly due to the election, but slipped this quarter, falling from 66.0 to 62.1 on the Richmond Fed’s index.

Click here to keep reading.—CV

Chances are your workplace at least dabbles in generative AI—though it’s likely not a big moneymaker yet.

Nearly three-quarters (71%) of business leaders say their companies are regularly tapping the technology for at least one business function, in a new McKinsey report based on a survey from last July. That’s up from the 65% who said so earlier in 2024.

The consultancy’s state of AI report—based on a survey of nearly 1,500 people at companies of all sizes and industries around the world—paints a picture of steadily growing generative AI adoption with modest financial gains, but no huge windfalls yet.

Four in five of these companies aren’t seeing tangible bottom-line impact on their business as a whole, McKinsey’s survey found. But some individual departments are starting to clock slight revenue increases and cost reductions.

Show me the money: Strategy and corporate finance, supply chain, marketing and sales, service operations, and software engineering were among the top areas where companies are both saving money and boosting revenue. The survey also mentioned HR, legal and compliance, and IT as units where generative AI was a cost-cutter but not a revenue driver.

Keep reading Tech Brew’s story on the financial impact of AI here.—PK