Autonomous finance requires CFOs who are willing to upskill themselves to succeed.
According to Gartner, a lack of digital skills in senior finance leaders will drive half of unwanted staff turnover by 2026.
CFOs will need to accelerate their digital knowledge and better engage with digital-savvy staff to mitigate turnover and disruption, the advisory firm pointed out.
CFOs are preparing their teams for a time when finance will operate autonomously, driven by technologies such as AI, but not many finance leaders are learning digital skills themselves, said Marco Steecker, research director in Gartner’s Finance practice.
“An already-wide digital skills gap between management and their reports will increase in coming years if unaddressed, and digital-laggard CFOs will increasingly struggle to manage staff who are delivering their digital initiatives,” Steecker noted.
Gartner’s analysis of talent’s role in delivering an autonomous finance function is driven in part by the changing nature of finance staff.
By 2026, AI and automation will result in 50% of all new employees hired by top-performing corporate finance functions having backgrounds other than finance or accounting, Gartner predicted.
Digitally savvy associates rate people management as one of the most critical factors in choosing where they work, the firm added.
Even in today’s finance function, 18% of finance staff demonstrate digital competency, compared with just 11% of their managers, according to Gartner.
As demand grows for tech skills, and traditional accounting backgrounds wane, this knowledge gap will also grow unless senior management, including CFOs, step up their digital education efforts, Gartner said.
“Our research shows that CFOs who directly champion AI and other digital efforts significantly impact the success of autonomous finance programs compared to those who take a passive role,” said Steecker. “CFOs who develop greater digital literacy will be able to engage with their most vital talent and mitigate unwanted attrition that could derail their transformation efforts.”
He recommends that CFOs prepare themselves and their senior finance managers for increasing demands of digital literacy through the following steps:
Revisit and update finance manager competency frameworks to prioritise digital competencies.
Establish and participate in wider organisational digital upskilling efforts, along with upskilling designed specifically for the finance function.
Pursue reverse-mentoring opportunities with digitally literate staff.
The most successful digital upskilling programmes we see are the ones where the CFO is personally visible and involved in the coursework, said Steecker.
“This goes beyond just a powerful signalling effect and provides leaders with the fluency to speak the language of their key talent,” he advised.
