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generalheff's review against another edition
2.0
A functional introduction to the CFO position, but a book that doesn’t deliver much beyond this. A lot of the discussion of the role is couched in fairly anodyne language, often straight from CFOs themselves who, I suppose, were always unlikely to go on record and reveal much that is revelatory about the role.
The book would would have benefited from a few more of the vignettes spattered around. These offered concrete examples to flesh out the often vague generalities found elsewhere and represent the best the book has to offer.
By contrast, there is an almost laughably limited attention paid to the key roles CFOs have played in corporate accounting scandals. The book goes so far as to quote Enron’s still-evasive former CFO Andy Fastow, while barely mentioning his central and criminal role in his company’s collapse. Such avoidance probably reflects the book’s intended audience: not an interested onlooker but aspirant CFOs who are unlikely to value an overt focus on the murky side of their role.
I think it is likely better to read a deep dive into a specific corporation, or a relevant corporate event, to gain some insight (and perhaps some less self-serving insight) into what a CFO does than spend more than an afternoon churning through this book.
The book would would have benefited from a few more of the vignettes spattered around. These offered concrete examples to flesh out the often vague generalities found elsewhere and represent the best the book has to offer.
By contrast, there is an almost laughably limited attention paid to the key roles CFOs have played in corporate accounting scandals. The book goes so far as to quote Enron’s still-evasive former CFO Andy Fastow, while barely mentioning his central and criminal role in his company’s collapse. Such avoidance probably reflects the book’s intended audience: not an interested onlooker but aspirant CFOs who are unlikely to value an overt focus on the murky side of their role.
I think it is likely better to read a deep dive into a specific corporation, or a relevant corporate event, to gain some insight (and perhaps some less self-serving insight) into what a CFO does than spend more than an afternoon churning through this book.
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