The CFO’s First 90 Days: What the Best Ones Fix First
The CFO’s First 90 Days: What the Best Ones Fix First
The first 90 days in a CFO role rarely look the way they do on paper.
By the time a new CFO arrives, expectations are already high. Boards want confidence, CEOs want clarity, and finance teams want direction. Yet the most effective CFOs don’t try to change everything at once. They focus on a small number of fundamentals that quietly shape everything else.
Here’s what the best ones tend to fix first.
The truth behind the numbers
Before strategy comes credibility.
Effective CFOs quickly test whether the numbers can be trusted. Not just whether they reconcile, but whether they genuinely explain what’s happening in the business. That means understanding data quality, assumptions, and where judgement is being applied — or avoided.
If leadership doesn’t believe the numbers, nothing built on top of them will land.
The reporting rhythm
It’s rarely the content that’s broken. It’s the cadence.
High-performing CFOs simplify and stabilise the reporting cycle early. They shorten timelines, reduce noise, and focus reports on decisions rather than descriptions. The goal isn’t prettier packs — it’s faster, clearer conversations.
When reporting improves, behaviour follows.
Cash visibility
Even profitable businesses get this wrong.
Strong CFOs establish clear, forward-looking cash visibility within weeks, not months. They understand where cash is tied up, what’s predictable, and where risk sits. This becomes the foundation for confident decision-making, especially in uncertain markets.
Cash clarity buys time — and trust.
Stakeholder confidence
CFOs don’t just manage finance. They manage expectations.
Early one-to-one conversations with board members, investors, lenders, and senior leaders help set tone and alignment. The most effective CFOs listen more than they speak in these meetings, using them to understand pressure points before offering solutions.
Credibility is built quietly, long before it’s tested publicly.
The finance team’s operating model
The first 90 days aren’t about restructuring. They’re about diagnosis.
Effective CFOs assess capability, ownership, and workload distribution across the team. They look for bottlenecks, single points of failure, and where high-value people are buried in low-value work.
Only once this picture is clear do meaningful changes follow.
The common thread?
The strongest CFOs don’t start with transformation headlines. They start with fundamentals that compound.
By fixing trust in the numbers, rhythm in reporting, and confidence in cash and capability, they create the platform for everything else — strategy, growth, and change.
At Harper May, we see this pattern repeatedly in CFO appointments that go on to succeed. The early focus is rarely flashy, but it’s what separates short-term stability from long-term impact.
