The Corner Office Gets a New Tenant: Why Finance Chiefs Are Taking Over 

The least popular person at budget meetings is increasingly becoming the most popular choice for CEO. 

Welcome to the age of the finance chief executive. 

In boardrooms across the country, directors face elevated inflation, interest rates that remain stubbornly high, and geopolitical tensions that make planning feel like fortune-telling. The solution they’re reaching for might surprise you: promoting the CFO. 

Last year marked a watershed moment. 4.93% of new CEOs had held CFO roles in early 2024, up from 3.58% in 2018, according to Live Data Technologies, which analyzed 360,000 CEO promotions. The percentage has increased every year since 2020, when it sat at just 3.49%. The finance path to the corner office has steadily widened. 

Behind these numbers lies a perfect storm. Economic chaos demands leaders who speak fluent balance sheet. The extinction of the COO role, down to just 35% of Fortune 500 companies by 2013, has pushed CFOs into operational territory. And boards desperate for stability are choosing the executive who’s been steering through the storm all along. 

The Board’s New Math

The modern CFO looks nothing like their predecessor from a decade ago. Today’s finance chief juggles responsibilities beyond finance in over 70% of cases, according to Gartner’s latest survey. They’re not tracking cash flow in isolation. They’re negotiating with suppliers, overseeing digital makeovers, and increasingly, leading artificial intelligence investments that 58% of CFOs are now pursuing. 

This broader scope has reshaped what boards see when they look at their CFO. Where they once saw a numbers person, they now see someone who’s been running half the company already. The vanishing COO role accelerated this evolution, forcing CFOs to absorb everything from supply chain management to technology operations. 

Economic turbulence has made this expertise particularly valuable. 70% of CFOs express serious concern about macroeconomic conditions impacting their businesses, per PwC’s Pulse Survey. When every decision carries heightened financial risk, boards want someone at the helm who understands both the numbers and the operations behind them. 

Consider what happened at Merck. When Ken Frazier stepped down in 2021, the board appointed CFO Rob Davis, announcing the succession a year in advance. Davis brought both financial expertise and operational understanding, exactly what the board wanted during uncertain times. 

Why Finance Chiefs Actually Win

CFOs bring something to the CEO role that other executives often lack: the ability to translate between departments. Every initiative in a company eventually becomes a financial question. Marketing wants to launch a campaign? Operations needs new equipment? Technology wants to upgrade systems? It all flows through finance. 

This translation ability matters now especially. Boards increasingly want directors with financial expertise during inflationary periods. Extending that logic, they want CEOs who can read economic tea leaves while managing day-to-day operations. 

But there’s a catch. The transition from CFO to CEO requires developing entirely new ways of thinking, not just adding operational experience. Deloitte research finds that finance leaders must move beyond their comfort zone of financial frameworks to qualities like self-assurance in the face of transparency and activist shareholders. The same financial discipline that makes CFOs attractive to boards during uncertain times requires careful expansion to meet the CEO’s broader mandate. 

How to Get Ready

Ambitious CFOs are already moving. Developing the mindsets and mental habits to become a successful CEO can take anywhere from 24 months to four years, depending on when the decision is made and existing skills. 

Start by getting operational experience. Finance leaders who want the top job need to run something: a division, a product line, a geographic region. Board presentations offer another opportunity. Many CEOs happily delegate board decks, giving CFOs direct exposure to directors while marshaling senior leadership. 

Communication requires a complete overhaul, too. CFOs must grow into more effective communicators and advocates for actions that create value. While CFOs speak the language of EBITDA and cash flow, CEOs must translate vision into terms that resonate with software engineers in Silicon Valley, manufacturing partners in Vietnam, and regulators in Brussels. Each audience demands different proof points, different narratives, and different promises about the future. 

Even harder than communication is the mindset shift. Former CFOs must be able to tap into ways of framing problems and solutions that often fall far outside the realm of what served them well as financial leaders. A CFO might kill a product launch because margins look thin. That same CFO as CEO must sometimes green-light that launch because it opens new markets or blocks competitors. The spreadsheet says no, but strategy demands yes. 

Making Your Ambitions Known

Most CFOs assume their CEO ambitions are obvious. They’re not. Tell your CEO you want additional operational responsibilities. Without that conversation, you’re just another finance chief doing excellent work in your lane. 

Building the right team becomes critical as well. To free up time for strategic work, CFOs need a strong controller who can handle day-to-day finance operations. This creates space for the bigger work. Every hour spent on routine finance work is an hour not spent preparing for the corner office. 

Mentorship matters too, but choose wisely. Find sponsors whose opinions carry weight, not just cheerleaders who encourage from the sidelines. The best mentors see potential and create opportunities to fill experience gaps. 

The Verdict on Tomorrow

Will this trend continue? The underlying conditions suggest yes. Economic uncertainty remains elevated, making financial expertise valuable. 62% of CEOs selected growth as their top business priority in 2024, the highest level since 2014, according to Gartner, requiring leaders who understand both expansion and efficiency 

Yet challenges loom. CFOs with financial backgrounds may default to cost-cutting over growth, potentially limiting innovation. The skills gap between running finance and running companies remains real too. 

For ambitious CFOs, the window is open but won’t stay that way forever. Those who succeed won’t be the ones with the best spreadsheets. They’ll be the ones who’ve already started thinking beyond the numbers, building operational experience, and proving they can inspire as effectively as they can calculate. The corner office isn’t just about understanding finance but about using that understanding to drive the entire enterprise forward. 

 
About the Author

Cathy Logue, FCPA, FCA is a founding Managing Director at Stanton Chase Toronto and Global Leader of Stanton Chase’s CFO Practice Group. She has over 30 years of executive search and financial leadership experience, working with clients across North America. Prior to her career in executive search, Cathy obtained her Chartered Accountant designation with Ernst & Young, and was awarded the Fellow (FCPA, FCA) designation in 2017. In 2021, she was recognized by the WXN Top 100: Most Powerful Women in Canada for her efforts in advancing women in leadership. Cathy sits on the Board of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) and is former Vice Chair, Finance on the Stanton Chase Board of Directors.