{"id":17064,"date":"2006-12-01T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2006-12-01T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=17064"},"modified":"2016-04-03T19:48:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T00:48:00","slug":"what-does-the-future-hold-for-finance-and-cfos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/what-does-the-future-hold-for-finance-and-cfos\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does the Future Hold For Finance and CFOs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Financial Executive Magazine<\/strong>
\nBy Jeffrey Marshall and Ellen M. Heffes<\/p>\n

The editors reached out to a wide range of experts \u2014 CFOs and former CFOs, consultants, academics, accountants and technology vendors \u2014 to get their thoughts about what the coming years could bring for financial executives.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re old enough to remember the 1960s\u2019 cartoon, The Jetsons, you\u2019ll recall a very different vision of the \u201cfuture\u201d than the one we\u2019re living in now. The Jetsons had a robot to do housework, and traveled in a kind of mini-pod vehicle that was attached to something like a monorail. Appliances made their everyday lives largely work-free.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point here is that speculation about the future, however well-informed, can\u2019t accurately predict how quickly we;ll get there. As much as the world of business and finance has changed in the past 75 years, it probably hasn\u2019t altered as much as some might have forecast. And some of the eternal truths about finance keep getting repeated, implying that change is more gradual than it might appear.<\/p>\n

Consider some of the thoughts from people in the field years ago. In \u201cThe Future and the Financial Executive,\u201d in the February 1973 issue of Financial Executive, management consultant Alfredo Amescua R. wrote: \u201cAs a top-level professional, the financial executive must have an overall view of the corporation. He has to be more and more sensitive to humanistic values and he must not restrict himself to acting only on the basis of a purely technical analysis of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the October 1981 issue \u2014 celebrating FEI\u2019s 50th Anniversary \u2014 Edward W. Golden, chairman of Skott\/Edwards Consultants Inc., wrote on \u201cThe Changing Role of the Financial Executive: The continuing challenge in our field is developing people who are by nature somewhat reserved and introverted into positions that call for dynamic human relations skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the growing role of technology, another financial officer said, \u201cThe world is swimming a little faster; if the financial executive ever had a green eyeshade, he doesn\u2019t have time to put it on anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, 25 years ago, the top finance job was summed up: \u201cThe dynamically changing function of the financial executive has created a demand for a new type of individual to fill what has become the exciting focal point of the American business community. And, men and women (included, finally) will find a job filled with: more pressure, increased visibility, more mobility, better compensation and more opportunity.\u201d The article ends: \u201cIn short, it\u2019s a bull market today for the qualified financial executive. Those who can accommodate the changing demands and meet the challenges of today are assured a bright tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about today\u2019s take on tomorrow? Without asking them to get too cosmic, the editors reached out to a host of different people in different realms of finance to get their views on what the future will bring to CFOs and finance departments. Those responses can be broken down into a number of subject areas. Here are their replies:<\/p>\n

FRAUD:<\/strong>
\nTracy L. Coenen, a principal in Sequence Inc.<\/strong> in Milwaukee, has spent the 10 past years in forensic accounting. A CPA and certified fraud examiner, she has a somewhat jaundiced view of companies\u2019 current and prospective anti-fraud efforts. \u201cUntil companies admit that fraud may have an impact on them, that won\u2019t change,\u201d she says. \u201cA common estimate is that fraud represents 5 percent of revenues each year \u2014 and a lot of companies don\u2019t think that\u2019s material to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coenen agrees that \u201csome of the better companies\u201d have used Sarbanes-Oxley compliance to fix some of their internal controls. But, in an ominous thought for the future, she adds, \u201cSome simply did the documentation they were required to do; they didn\u2019t use to effort to improve the [financial reporting] process.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Coenen doesn\u2019t think the answer is future regulation, and doesn\u2019t favor \u201ca lot of legislation; I\u2019d rather see companies be proactive about it.\u201d She believes that companies \u201ccould do a lot more to act on risk; they are not taking preventive measures. They don\u2019t make it a top priority. Companies think their controls are better than they really are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Financial Executive Magazine By Jeffrey Marshall and Ellen M. Heffes The editors reached out to a wide range of experts \u2014 CFOs and former CFOs, consultants, academics, accountants and technology vendors \u2014 to get their thoughts about what the coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,1659,827],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auditing-regulations","category-internal-investigations","category-public-companies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-4re","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}