The CFO role continues to push well beyond traditional financial stewardship just as economic headwinds intensify and technology disruption accelerates. As finance leaders enter 2026, they face an uncomfortable truth: Research shows that their top five priorities rank almost equally in importance, so there’s no obvious place to focus first. CFOs must drive multiple critical initiatives simultaneously, a reality that demands new approaches to leadership and resource allocation.
Economic uncertainty dominates CFO concerns. While recent interest rate cuts provide some relief, persistent inflation continues to drive up operating expenses and strain budgets. Supply chain volatility threatens production schedules and cash flow predictability. Yet, finance chiefs recognize the need to continue funding innovation, including investments in AI, automation capabilities, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting systems, while maintaining financial stability and competing for skilled accounting teams.
The Role of the CFO: What’s Changed?
Today’s CFOs look forward more than backward, using predictive analytics and strategic forecasting to guide company decision-making even as they continue to report historical performance. Furthermore, 95% of financial C-suite, VP, and director-level respondents to a recent survey say their roles have expanded far outside traditional finance functions. Whether by leading cross-functional initiatives, focusing on strategic partnerships, evaluating technology, reporting ESG activity, or working to meet revenue and earnings goals, a CFO is now expected to be the strategic catalyst of company growth—not just the head of the financial organization.
This shift extends to organizational structure. Many CFOs are companywide leaders directly overseeing nonfinance functions, such as IT, HR, and operations. Some organizations have formalized this expansion by combining the CFO and COO roles into a single position, that of chief finance and operations officer, or CFOO, in recognition of the natural alignment between financial strategy and operational execution. Whether holding a combined title or not, CFOs increasingly serve as the CEO’s strategic partner in major decisions and engage directly with boards on matters ranging from risk management to growth strategy.
This is not to imply that CFOs have relinquished their fundamental accountability for maintaining cash flow, owning financial processes, attesting to financial statements’ accuracy, and dealing with investors, auditors, and tax authorities. The proverbial “buck” still stops with CFOs when it comes to the overall financial health of their organizations. These competing demands show no sign of letting up, as 64% of organizations expect to need even more technical skills and capabilities within their finance functions, according to a Deloitte study.
Key Takeaways
- The CFO role has expanded significantly over time, with most CFOs managing functions beyond accounting and finance. This shift brings both professional opportunities and challenges.
- CFOs’ agendas now track efforts to manage constant changes wrought by economic uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, evolving regulations, ESG mandates, and fluctuating capital costs.
- Finance operations are under mounting pressure to achieve profitable growth, devise more accurate forecasts, and strengthen fraud prevention.
- Unifying fragmented data and achieving ROI from AI and digital initiatives is CFOs’ next hurdle.
- Integrated technology platforms provide the tools CFOs need to meet their challenges successfully.
The 15 Biggest Challenges for CFOs
A glimpse into what will keep CFOs awake at night in 2026 reveals tough challenges that will come from all corners of their organizations. Here are 15 of the most significant:
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AI Integration and Implementation
CFOs are grappling with the practical realities of implementing AI, especially when it comes to identifying where it can deliver measurable value. The share of finance teams using AI tools jumped from 34% in 2024 to 72% in 2025, underscoring the speed and trajectory of AI adoption. Teams currently use AI for strategic work that enhances decision support, such as better forecasting, and for automating operational tasks that enhance efficiency, such as automating routine accounting processes and strengthening internal controls and fraud detection.
Yet despite the doubling of AI adoption in 2025, only about 30% of finance functions are embedding AI in core processes like FP&A or procure-to-pay. Many AI finance implementations are still in pilot mode. Narrowing the gap between expectations and AI execution in finance and accounting, and rationalizing the associated investments, is a key next step for CFOs. This might entail expanding low-risk pilot projects into fully integrated end-to-end finance workflows to gain quick wins.
CFOs are also managing organizational challenges and cultural shifts, both within the finance department and among other internal and external stakeholders. Finance teams, for example, need reassurance about their evolving roles as AI’s involvement expands, in order to promote smooth adoption and reduce resistance to change. At the same time, boards and auditors demand transparency in AI-driven financial decisions, which means that CFOs have to make sure AI systems are explainable and auditable. CFOs demand striking a balance between gradually building trust in AI and maintaining appropriate human oversight for material financial decisions.
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Growth and Profitability
CFOs anticipate growth, projecting average revenue increases of 7.8% for 2025-2026, according to a collaborative CFO survey conducted by the Federal Reserve banks of Richmond and Atlanta and Duke University. However, converting this top-line growth—about half of which comes from price increases—into bottom-line profits will present a serious challenge. At the beginning of 2025, 73% of CFOs expected revenue to increase but only 52% anticipated profitability gains, underscoring how rising costs, competitive pressures, and market dynamics are constraining margins.
As a result, CFOs are pushing to reevaluate business models with a focus on changes that support both sustainable growth and profitability. Traditional, volume-based growth strategies will be replaced by data-driven profitability management. Half (51%) of CFOs now rank customer acquisition and retention as a top priority, but with an important nuance: pinpointing high-value, profitable customers. This shift calls for more rigorous financial analysis of marketing spend and customer segmentation. To do this, CFOs will rely more on advanced analytics to measure customer lifetime value, contribution margins, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) that tie growth initiatives to profitability outcomes.
It also means that CFOs need to tighten operational efficiency to maximize the conversion of revenue into profits and to mitigate potential market headwinds, such as changes in regulations or customer spending. This may include investing in automation, exploring shared services that deliver economies of scale, and actively managing pricing and product mix to boost profits.
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Talent Acquisition, Retention, and Filling Skill Gaps
Finding people with the right skills to staff their departments is a sizable challenge for CFOs. The traditional talent pool of CPAs is shrinking. Three-quarters of current accounting professionals are within 13 years of retirement, and new CPA exam candidates have fallen by 27% over the past decade, squeezing both ends of the professional pipeline.
This shortage coincides with expanding skill requirements, including expertise in data analytics, AI, and technology platforms alongside traditional finance competencies. The mismatch between traditional accounting education and what is needed today forces CFOs and their HR partners to find new recruiting channels to seek out and compete for those rare candidates who possess all the necessary skills. As AI adoption accelerates and finance departments take on more strategic responsibilities, this skill gap threatens to become a bottleneck that limits organizations’ ability to implement new technologies and meet revised mandates.
Compounding the shortage, CFOs find themselves dealing with declining retention stemming from professional burnout generated by the combination of expanded responsibilities and limited resources. The rapid pace of technological changes adds more pressure, as staff must constantly upskill and adapt to new systems while continuing to manage day-to-day operations. CFOs have several paths forward: invest in training programs to develop internal talent, automate processes to reduce head-count needs, and restructure roles to attract professionals from adjacent fields.
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Unifying Disparate Data
While the finance function has long been a clearinghouse for corporate “numbers,” today’s CFOs are expected to be organizational storytellers who can turn those numbers into a narrative that fuels strategy. A unified view of companywide data is a crucial foundation for those narratives. Moreover, unifying data is no longer a matter of getting information out of spreadsheets and into accounting systems; now, it means integrating financial information with operating metrics, customer insights, risk indicators, workforce productivity, and external market intelligence, and then feeding that unified data to analytics, AI models, and updated dashboards. Without this foundation of unified data, nothing works as intended. AI investments fail to deliver reliable results, analytics yields superficial or inaccurate data, and finance teams continue to spend time reconciling conflicting information.
The CFO’s data unification challenge goes beyond technology. True data unification requires organizational alignment on definitions, ownership, and governance. Even advanced integration tools can’t compensate for inconsistent standards or managers who don’t trust shared information. CFOs will need to prioritize enterprisewide data governance frameworks, breaking down functional silos, and maintaining the accuracy and auditability regulators demand. The payoff: When every team is looking at the same live numbers, data-to-decision velocity accelerates, translating insights into action faster.
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Improving Forecast Accuracy
Pressure from stakeholders for CFOs to forecast more accurately and farther into the future is inducing financial forecasting to become a continuous “rolling” activity, rather than a periodic exercise. This shift is also being propelled by economic volatility that isn’t expected to go away and by the growing ability of data and AI tools to make more accurate predictions possible. Research shows that organizations that have already adopted AI reduced sales forecasting errors by 57%. Furthermore, the majority of finance leaders have come to believe that generative AI can greatly enrich their teams’ understanding of forecast and budget variances, helping them to act rapidly and more decisively in response to those changes. AI technology is raising the importance of forecasting by helping CFOs forecast with more accuracy through continuous model refinement and pattern recognition. However, realizing these gains depends on addressing the underlying data challenges that have long plagued financial services, including fragmented systems and inconsistent definitions across departments.
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Increasing Productivity With Automation
Escalating costs and diminishing returns from traditional actions, such as hiring freezes or outsourcing, point to automation as the likeliest path to improve productivity. However, CFOs have been challenged to show meaningful productivity gains, despite years of investing in finance automation tools. Consider that despite widespread adoption—82% of FP&A professionals use data connectivity tools and 66% use workflow automation—only a handful can report clear success.
The hurdle isn’t automation technology. Rather, integration with legacy systems and nonstandard processes are the leading obstacles. CFOs struggle with fragmented implementations that automate individual tasks without transforming end-to-end processes. Finance teams often use different tools that don’t communicate—for example, robotic process automation for invoice processing, AI capabilities embedded in forecasting software, and separate workflow platforms for approvals. New inefficiencies are created for teams that must manage handoffs between automated and manual steps.
Going forward, the challenge for CFOs is consolidating these disparate automation investments into integrated workflows that deliver measurable productivity gains while maintaining proper controls and flexibility. Research shows that CFOs who unify their automation efforts have boosted productivity through faster month-end closes and reduced manual workflows with less manual data capture and manipulation.
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Preventing Fraud and Investing in Cybersecurity
As part of the CFO’s mandate to be the economic guardian of the business, these leaders are often responsible for risk management, including finding and preventing fraud and investing in cybersecurity. CFOs recognize the need to protect sensitive data, the potential costs that cyberattacks can cause, and the damage financial statement fraud can cause in the form of lost investor trust and regulatory scrutiny.
Indeed, an EY study of global CFOs revealed that more than half see risk management as one of their toughest challenges—and the percentage increases with the size of the organization.
The expected permanence of remote workforces adds a new dimension for CFOs attempting to manage potential fraud and cybersecurity risks, and it makes cloud-based solutions more attractive, given their security advantages.
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Managing Uncertainty
More than half (59%) of CFOs and VPs of finance in a recent survey reported that they were not very confident in their organization’s ability to navigate uncertainties in the current economy—highlighting why managing uncertainty will be a key challenge for CFOs going forward. Risk management has long been part of a CFO’s job; what’s new is that improved technology can give them tools to manage their risks more aggressively. Whether using advanced scenario-planning capabilities or leveraging AI-powered predictions for more comprehensive analyses, more CFOs are shifting from reactive stances to proactive risk management. These tools help CFOs model multiple futures, using larger and more varied data sets, so they can refine the stress-test strategies they use to appraise various scenarios and build greater resilience into their operating models.
Some CFOs are investing in dedicated risk management teams, while others are focusing on building more agile governance models for speedier decision-making. These changes allow organizations to pivot quickly when assumptions are modified or new risks emerge.
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Maintaining Compliance
CFOs will have to deal with a more complex regulatory landscape in 2026; not surprisingly, financial reporting and disclosure requirements rank as their second-highest concern (25%), with data privacy and tax regulations close behind (24% and 22%, respectively). For example, changes in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) taking effect in 2025 and 2026 regarding credit losses for accounts receivable, crypto asset accounting, and joint venture accounting, may prompt significant compliance projects. Meanwhile, ESG disclosure requirements continue to evolve. CFOs will likely rely on external auditors to help implement these and other future changes.
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Embracing Innovation and Digital Transformation
Moving into 2026, CFOs will likely be doing more than funding innovation—they’ll be expected to govern it, too. The rapid adoption of AI, real-time analytics, and automated workflows has made embracing innovation a finance priority as much as a technological one. As a result, CFOs are taking on the challenge of figuring out which technologies are worth the investment, based not only on cost savings but on whether they make the business more productive and competitive.
Balance holds the key to this challenge. CFOs must work to give staff enough room to experiment with emerging technologies without compromising the financial controls and security standards that protect the business. Working alongside other C-suite leaders, CFOs can leverage their intimate knowledge of business performance to adopt financial innovation in a way that drives growth. Tools, including predictive modeling, dashboards, and KPIs, help identify opportunities early so finance executives can direct operations to adapt quickly. Successful CFOs will embed innovation into their core processes, not view it in terms of discrete projects.
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Navigating Supply Chain Disruptions
Past supply chain disruptions made clear that supply chain risk equals financial risk. This fact of life has spurred CFOs to become involved in supply chain strategy—no longer just approving procurement budgets or managing working capital. Every sourcing choice, inventory level, and supplier relationship directly affects cash flow, profitability, and enterprise risk.
The primary challenge for CFOs lies in quantifying the true cost of supply chain disruptions beyond immediate operational impacts. This means developing new financial models that capture hidden costs, such as lost customer lifetime value from stockouts, working capital tied up in longer lead times, and the value of supplier diversification. CFOs may need to conduct difficult conversations: Is a 15% cost savings worth the risk of concentrating business with a single supplier? Does nearshoring make sense despite its higher costs? These strategic decisions require CFOs to blend financial analysis with risk assessment in ways that weren’t expected of finance leaders even a few years ago. The rest of the challenge is to institutionalize this expanded view of supply chain finance into everyday decision-making.
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Managing Taxes and Regulation
CFOs will certainly have their hands full in 2026, managing the sweeping changes introduced by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), signed into law in July 2025. Regarded as the most significant tax overhaul since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the OBBBA revised key international tax provisions, including Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI), Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) deductions, and the Base Erosion and Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT).
At the same time, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Pillar Two global minimum tax continues to roll out across various jurisdictions, each on its own timeline. It requires multinational businesses to pay a minimum effective tax rate of 15% in every country where they operate. Changes in tariff policy are adding other layers of difficulty: 85% of finance chiefs report adjusting their business plans as a result, and 59% expect negative impacts on their organizations, according to the AICPA & CIMA “Economic Outlook Survey” for the first quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, several US states are introducing new tax measures to bolster revenues, compounding tax compliance demands.
For CFOs, these developments call for both rapid response and longer-term strategic tax planning. The immediate challenge lies in complying with new OBBBA provisions while optimizing corporate structures to benefit from them. CFOs will need to assess how changes to GILTI, FDII, and BEAT affect their international tax strategies, potentially prompting supply chain restructuring or a reorganization of corporate entities. Many may choose to invest in advanced tax technology platforms capable of handling multijurisdictional requirements, along with providing additional staff training to improve finance teams’ understanding of the relationship between US reforms and global tax rule changes.
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Expansion of CFO Priorities and Responsibilities
The broadening scope of the CFO role creates a real personal challenge: how to excel in multiple domains while maintaining focus on core financial leadership. CFOs report feeling stretched thin, pulled in competing directions. Boards want strategic insights, operations needs tactical support, and regulators demand detailed compliance. CFOs express frustration at where their time actually goes. Strategy, talent development, and partnering with business leaders often get pushed aside by day-to-day requirements.
Meeting this challenge demands excellent time management, delegation of tasks to reliable team members, and the development of expertise in several disparate areas quickly enough to add real value. For example, a CFO overseeing IT must understand cybersecurity risks and digital transformation. Those managing HR need to grasp workforce planning and organizational design for different functional areas. Such breadth of responsibility requires CFOs to build trusted teams that can own day-to-day activity in specific areas but keep the CFO sufficiently informed to make sound, strategic decisions. Successful CFOs will need to master the executive art of careful delegation, toggling between when to dive deep and when to empower others, all while maintaining the unified vision that stakeholders expect them to provide.
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Supporting ESG Initiatives
Even as CFOs struggle to demonstrate ROI on ESG investments made in prior years, 2026 will usher in two additional ESG challenges. First, multiple mandatory compliance deadlines are converging, including the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive for large multinationals and California’s climate disclosure laws, each of which demands different metrics for the same hard-to-quantify effects. Companies risk penalties for noncompliance or poor data quality
Second, CFOs are encountering more pressure to communicate ESG performance. Investors, for example, expect sustainability metrics to be integrated into financial dashboards and AI-powered analytics rather than reported separately. This requires CFOs to embed ESG data into core financial systems with the same rigorous attention as they give to revenue or cost data. In other words, as companies face their first ESG compliance audits and potential penalties, stakeholders are emphasizing the challenge to make ESG data as reliable and actionable as traditional financial information.
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Capital Costs
The cost of capital is a perennial CFO concern but 2026 brings unusual twists. Even though the Federal Reserve began cutting its core policy rate in 2025, borrowing costs remain higher than in the past decade. Concurrently, inflation remains above government targets and is uneven across regions, so markets remain uncertain about how quickly or how far interest rates will fall. This volatility complicates long-term planning.
Meanwhile, the nature of capital expenditures has changed for many companies. Investments in automation and other technologies depreciate faster than most physical assets and carry higher obsolescence risk, which puts pressure on project ROIs. As a result, CFOs are moving away from annual capital budgeting and toward dynamic capital portfolio management, monitoring projects in real time and reallocating funds as conditions change. Finance teams must now be even more proficient at scenario modeling and sensitivity analysis, essential for evaluating ROI and payback periods under multiple interest rate and inflation assumptions.
Looking ahead, CFOs must plan for an economic landscape in which capital gradually becomes cheaper but remains unpredictable. They must stand ready to renegotiate debt structures and adjust funding priorities as conditions shift because they’re expected to fund the innovation essential to long-term growth, yet still preserve cash. This balancing act between cost discipline and strategic investment was evident in a 2025 survey in which more than half of the responding finance chiefs ranked cost optimization as a top focus and a similar share reported increasing spending on digital and automation initiatives.
Make Your Job Easier With ERP
Modern software solutions are built to handle many of CFOs’ toughest challenges, and ERP systems like NetSuite’s deliver multiple integrated modules that support financial management and planning, order management, production management, supply chain management, warehouse and fulfillment, and procurement. A modern ERP system with financial management capabilities and unified data solves fragmentation problems and feeds AI tools’ ability to provide more accurate forecasting and variance analysis. Real-time visibility supports dynamic capital allocations and supply chain decisions. NetSuite’s built-in compliance controls make it easier to adapt to new regulations, and its automated workflows reduce manual tasks that contribute to team burnout. For CFOs managing an ever-growing range of responsibilities, having these capabilities within a single platform delivers the information and control they need to meet 2026’s challenges successfully.
The next year is expected to be one of persistent economic uncertainty and rapid technological change, set against a backdrop of evolving stakeholder expectations. The environment will likely challenge CFOs along three fronts: technology adoption, including AI integration and automation; operational complexity from supply chain volatility and regulatory compliance; and workforce challenges. As CFOs’ roles continue to expand beyond financial stewardship, success depends on balancing innovation with discipline, supported by the right systems and skilled teams.
CFO Challenges FAQs
What did CFOs care about in 2024?
During 2024, CFOs were mainly focused on managing peak inflation and high interest rates that raised costs and squeezed profitability. Other key priorities included launching early AI pilots and proof-of-concept finance automation projects and addressing the ongoing talent shortage in accounting and finance. Many CFOs also dealt with expanding ESG reporting, cybersecurity, and internal controls to support distributed workforces.
What does a CFO care about?
CFOs are one of the few C-suite executives with companywide responsibilities; therefore, they care about all facets of operations within a business. They are involved in strategic partnerships, evaluating technology, risk mitigation, and advising the CEO, in addition to leading the finance organization.
What are good questions to ask a CFO?
Universally good questions to ask CFOs of businesses of all sizes and industries include:
- What key performance indicators are most important to you?
- Where should investments be directed in the short, medium and long term?
- How can we increase productivity?
- Is the company structured and staffed for success?
What keeps a CFO up at night?
CFOs are likely losing sleep over whether their AI investments deliver real ROI, concern that their teams are burned-out amid talent shortages, and wondering where macroeconomic forces will take them next. The scope of their role weighs heavily, as they juggle traditional financial responsibilities and companywide strategic leadership, all while maintaining the financial discipline and controls that protect their organization’s financial health.
