A importância da formação contábil: um estudo com executivos de finanças

Abstract

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) role has experienced extremely relevant changes in the last decades, which resulted in a deep transformation in the scope and responsibilities of this function. This scenario, combined with the low percentage of accountant CFOs, motivated this study, which was performed with the objective of assessing the importance of accounting background for professionals who seek Finance leadership positions. Giving the required demands of twentieth century such as capital structuring, mergers and splits, reorganization, bankruptcy, solvency and liquidity, cash flow and profitability, financial scandals, big data processing and analysis, economy globalization, concern with the valuation of new financial assets created, shareholder value added and 21st century regulatory framework, such as Corporate Governance, Transparency and the galloping evolution in digital innovation and communication, it is imperative to change the Finance Leader and his or her team skills. This study was conducted through interviews with 15 Finance Executives from national and multinational companies from different sizes and geographies. The results obtained with this sample show the market trend observed in the theoretical reference that points out that, despite the great relevance of accounting knowledge for companies, the number of CFOs that have accounting background is very small. In other words, there are few accountants as CFOs. Respondents, in general, point out the lack of strategic and business vision combined with a more technical and less generalist profile as the causes for such a phenomenon. Thus, this work can be used as an instrument for reflection on the current accountants’ background and evaluation of potential changes in the educational background of these professionals that allow them to develop the skills needed to have a leading role in the business organizations