Connor Augustyn, partner, CFO transformation at West Monroe, a global business and technology consulting firm based in Chicago, sees a common trap for CFOs: getting involved in lower-level discussions that should be outside of their purview. “They are getting pulled into accounting judgments, forecast debates, broken handoffs and operational clean up that should be resolved well before it reaches their desk.”
Instead, he argues, where CFOs create the most value is as the “enterprise allocator of capital, resources and management attention.”
In an interview, Augustyn shares how finance chiefs can make the shift, where teams can find AI ROI and how to stay aligned during major transitions.
Where are CFOs spending too much time today and where should they be focusing instead?
Too many CFOs are still operating as the organization’s highest-paid quality control function. They are getting pulled into accounting judgments, forecast debates, broken handoffs and operational clean up that should be resolved well before it reaches their desk.
That usually happens for one of three reasons: ownership is unclear, data confidence is low or finance has become the default escalation path for every unresolved business issue. I saw this recently with a PE-backed manufacturing business where the CFO was personally mediating working capital disputes between sales, operations and supply chain because no one truly owned cash conversion end to end.
That is not where the CFO creates the most value. The CFO should be the enterprise allocator of capital, resources and management attention. The role is less, “Are the numbers right?” and more, “What decisions should these numbers change, and are we confident enough to act?”
The shift is from doing to deciding. Finance leaders move the needle when they are focused on capital allocation, scenario planning, performance tradeoffs and shaping the value narrative with the board and investors.
As finance teams adopt AI, how should CFOs rethink their operating model to focus more on decision making, not just efficiency?
The biggest mistake is using AI to make the current finance model faster without asking whether that model is still the right one.
For years, finance transformation has centered on efficiency: faster closes, cleaner reconciliations, fewer manual reports and better controls. Those still matter, but AI raises the bar. It gives finance the opportunity to move from explaining what happened to shaping what happens next.
That requires more than a technology deployment. CFOs need to rethink where human judgment is most valuable, which roles should shift from production to insight and what level of data quality, governance and control discipline is required to trust AI-enabled recommendations.
Without an operating model change, AI just accelerates legacy work. The goal is not a faster finance function. It is a smarter one that helps the business make better decisions sooner.
What separates companies that are actually seeing ROI from AI from those that aren’t?
The companies seeing ROI from AI are not the ones with the most pilots. They are the ones with the clearest problem definition.
In the office of the CFO, AI has to be tied to a financial outcome: reducing days sales outstanding, improving forecast accuracy, accelerating variance analysis, identifying margin leakage, strengthening controls or shortening the close without adding risk. If the use case cannot be linked to a baseline and a measurable KPI, it is probably not ready to scale.
The CFOs getting traction treat AI like any other investment. They define the economic case, pressure test whether existing platforms can solve the issue, pilot narrowly and only scale when value is visible. AI ROI comes from financial discipline, not experimentation for its own sake.
During major transitions like private equity ownership, where do CFOs most often get misaligned?
Misalignment usually starts with the investment thesis. A private equity transition is not just a change in ownership. It is a reset of pace, priorities, decision rights and the definition of value. CFOs get into trouble when the sponsor’s thesis is not translated into the finance roadmap, reporting cadence, operating metrics and management routines.
I often see finance teams working hard on the right functional activities, but not necessarily the right value creation activities. For a sponsor-backed services business, the finance team was focused on improving close timelines, while the board was much more concerned with utilization, pricing leakage and gross margin by customer segment. Both mattered, but only one was central to the deal thesis.
The best CFOs make the thesis operational. If value creation depends on growth, margin expansion, cash generation or M&A, finance needs to orient its reporting, analytics, talent and governance around those priorities. In PE transitions, alignment beats activity. Execution only creates value when it is aimed at the right target.
