The finance function is changing faster than most career advice can keep up with.
When we surveyed over 2,500 finance leaders for our 2026 Market Insight Guide, one theme came through repeatedly: the skills and experiences that built today's CFOs won't be enough for the next generation. The path is shifting and those who recognise it early have a real advantage.
This isn't about predicting the future. It's about reading the signals that are already here.
If you're an early or mid-career finance professional with ambitions to lead, here's what the data and the leaders we speak to every day suggest you should be thinking about.
Let's start with the obvious. AI and automation are reshaping finance operations, and the profession knows it. When we asked where leaders would invest a single upskilling budget, half chose data analytics and AI tools. Technical accounting received no votes at all.
That's not a criticism of technical skills, they are still critical to executing the role. But it tells you something important about where the development priority sits. The expectation now is that you'll build digital fluency alongside everything else. It's no longer a differentiator. It's a baseline.
The interesting part is what comes next. As more of the transactional and analytical work gets automated, the value shifts to what you do with the output. Can you interpret it? Can you explain it to someone who doesn't speak finance? Can you turn it into a decision?
That's the real capability gap opening up.
This one surprised us or at least, the scale of it did.
When we asked which skills would be most in demand over the coming years, business partnering and commercial acumen came top at 56%. Critical thinking followed. Systems expertise. Communication.
Technical accounting and financial modelling? They ranked well below almost everything else.
The message from finance leaders is clear: they want people who understand how the business makes money, not just how to account for it. People who can sit in a commercial meeting and add value. People who see the second-order effects of decisions, not just the P&L line item.
If you're building a career toward CFO, this is the shift to pay attention to. The role is moving away from stewardship and toward strategic influence. That requires a different kind of thinking and it's worth developing early by working cross-functionally and deepening your understanding of how the business truly operates.
In a world where everyone's focused on digital capability, there's a risk of underinvesting in something more fundamental: the ability to build trust across an organisation.
Finance can be an isolated function. The work is technical. The language is specialist. It's easy to stay in your lane.
But the CFOs we place — and the ones who progress fastest — are the ones who've built genuine relationships outside finance. They understand operations. They've worked on projects with sales, with product, with the commercial teams. They're known beyond their own department.
Our data shows that 82% of finance professionals leave roles because they can't see a path forward. Often, that's about structure. But sometimes it's about visibility. If the only people who know your work are in finance, your opportunities will be limited to finance.
Here's a hard truth: working harder won't always get you there.
Career progression in finance depends heavily on being in the right environment at the right time. A high-growth business with expanding headcount and evolving challenges will give you more opportunities than a stable operation with a fixed structure — no matter how good your work is.
This doesn't mean chasing job titles or hopping every 18 months. It means being honest with yourself about whether your current role is developing you or just keeping you busy. And if it's the latter, being willing to move.
The professionals who reach CFO typically have a mix of experiences: different company sizes, different sectors, different stages of growth. They've seen what good looks like in multiple contexts. That breadth is hard to build if you stay in one place too long.
When finance leaders talk about the skills they value, communication comes up constantly. Not presentation skills in the corporate training sense but the ability to take complex information and make it land with a non-finance audience.
This is harder than it sounds. Finance is full of nuance. The temptation is to caveat everything, to show the working, to protect yourself with detail. But the best finance leaders know how to simplify without losing accuracy. They tell stories with data. They make the numbers mean something.
If you want to lead, you need to be able to move people. That's a skill worth practising now.
None of this is about abandoning the fundamentals. Technical competence still matters. Process discipline still matters. Getting the numbers right still matters.
But the path to CFO is no longer a straight line through technical roles. It's broader, messier, and more dependent on skills that don't show up on a qualification certificate.
The finance leaders of 2035 will be defined by their commercial instincts, their ability to influence, and their fluency with technology. If you're serious about getting there, start building those capabilities alongside the technical ones.
Our 2026 Finance and Accounting Market Insight & Salary Guide covers the full picture — skills demand, salary benchmarks, retention drivers, and what finance leaders are prioritising this year. It's free to download.
