Almost two-thirds of respondents to a CFO survey conducted earlier this year by Oliver Wyman/NYSE anticipated a shift away from junior roles. Four in ten expected more focus on mid-level roles, with almost a quarter referring to greater emphasis on senior positions.

Only one-in-eight of those surveyed predicted there would be more attention paid to junior roles. Yet 70% of the CFOs surveyed said an aging workforce required greater attention – so where are the mid-level and senior professionals of the future going to come from?

Building experience

Leaner finance functions will change the traditional career path, but they don’t necessarily have to limit progression, suggests Datasite CFO, Anjali Motiani.

“Historically, junior professionals built their experience through a large volume of transactional and analytical work before progressing into more strategic roles,” she says. “As AI and automation take on more of that work, the challenge for finance leaders is to make sure we are not also automating away the experiences people need to develop judgement.”

That means junior professionals may need earlier exposure to areas such as scenario planning, business partnering and decision support. Managers will also have to be much more deliberate about coaching and development.

“If companies simply hire fewer junior people without redesigning how they learn, we could create a shortage of experienced mid-level professionals several years from now,” adds Motiani. “But if we use technology to accelerate their development, there is an opportunity to build a stronger pipeline of finance talent.”

Partner to the business

One of the most valuable experiences for a developing finance professional is understanding how financial decisions connect to what is actually happening in the business.

Smaller organisations can sometimes provide that exposure earlier because teams are leaner, roles tend to be broader and finance professionals may work more directly with commercial and operational leaders. However, large organisations can create similar opportunities through rotations, cross-functional projects and partnering models.

“We see finance as a partner to the business rather than a policing function,” says Motiani. “Being embedded in conversations across the organisation gives finance earlier signals, strengthens decision making and builds a much deeper understanding of how the business operates. That kind of exposure can be particularly valuable for people earlier in their careers.”

When asked whether there was a trend for large companies delegating automated tasks to lower-cost staff, she suggests a more important question for finance leaders is how they redeploy people’s capacity once technology handles more routine activity.

“AI can analyse information, identify patterns and automate processes, but it can’t own accountability or replace human judgement. The opportunity is therefore to move finance professionals toward higher value work, such as interrogating outputs, understanding their implications, partnering with the business and supporting decisions, rather than simply shifting transactional work around the organisation.”

Asking better questions

While finance leaders should not preserve manual work for training’s sake, aspiring CFOs need to spend more time interrogating assumptions, understanding the business and communicating insights.

Financial expertise will remain fundamental, but Motiani believes it won’t be sufficient on its own. As the traditional finance pyramid changes, the people who progress will increasingly be those who can combine financial rigour with technology fluency, data literacy, commercial understanding, communication and strategic thinking.

“That means understanding what technology can do, asking better questions of data and being able to translate analysis into a business decision,” she says. “Relationship building is equally important because finance is becoming much more integrated with the rest of the organisation.”

The next generation of finance leaders will differentiate themselves not by how much information they can process manually, but by how effectively they can use technology, judgement and business understanding to turn information into action, she concludes.