“Recommended Reading” is a resource for financial executives, chosen by financial executives. The list below features the articles that were most in demand by our readers in 2004 — original articles from CFO.com, stories drawn from the pages of CFO magazine, and articles from CFO Europe,CFO Asia, CFO Research Services, and our content partners.
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You’re Not CFO Material
Wondering whether you have what it takes? Here are ten signs that you’re never going to make it to the big chair.
Body-Language Tactics That Sway Interviewers
Posture, eye contact, and other nonverbal communication can speak volumes about your feelings and attitudes. Here’s how to impress hiring managers with mannerisms that project confidence and enthusiasm.
Sarboxing
Finance executives continue to grapple with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. So far, it’s unclear who’s winning.
Are You the CFO Type?
For finance executives, a personality assessment can be very revealing about your preferences — and about your opportunities for growth.
Stuck in the SAS 70s
As Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 meets up with an obscure auditing standard, many companies are thinking hard about offshoring their business processes.
What You Don’t Know about Sarbanes-Oxley
Snares, pitfalls, and trapdoors: Sarbanes-Oxley is full of surprises. These five top the list.
Hard Times
Why finance executives are overworked and under stress.
When Do Companies Outgrow Their Spreadsheets?
There comes a time at every smaller, growing company when managers perceive a need for more sophisticated software tools than spreadsheet-dependent planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
The Six Cardinal Rules of Resume Writing
Experts say put a little more vitae into your curriculum vitae.
A Penney Saved
A deft turnaround buys time, but what’s in store long-term for the venerable retailer?
Sticker Shock
When Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, it didn’t worry about how much it would cost companies. Today, CFOs are totting up the compliance bill — and they don’t like what they see.
Too Much Cash
Companies are awash in cash. When will they finally start spending it?
Changing Fortunes: The 2004 Compensation Survey
With stock options tainted, pay packages grow more diverse — and smaller.
A Fine Balance
CPAs are back in vogue, but don’t forget the MBA. Skills and experience in both accounting and finance are best for a full career.
Extreme Makeover
How Robert Blakely and an army of accountants turned fraud-ridden WorldCom into squeaky-clean MCI.
Spreadsheet Hell
CFOs are interested in the many new technologies being pitched to them, but are they really trapped in spreadsheet hell?
Going for Growth
Finding new sources of revenue is harder than ever. Here’s how to grow without damaging your roots.
Offshoring Goes on the Offensive
Cost cutting is only the first benefit. Offshore companies can also deliver superior performance, even in highly skilled activities, and a better platform for entering new product markets.
Raising Red Flags
As they identify control weaknesses, companies find a common one: inadequate finance staffs.
New Terrain
Post-Enron reforms have made dramatic alterations to the landscape of corporate governance. Boards, their committees, and internal auditors now have greater responsibilities and powers. How will these reforms change the CFO’s job?
NASA, We Have a Problem
Can Gwendolyn Brown fix the space agency’s chronic financial woes?
Sarbanes-Oxley and Health Plans
The structure of employee health plans often obscures the view of benefit costs and internal controls that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act demands.
CPA Ascendant
With accounting savvy more important than ever, is the CPA the new must-have credential for finance execs?
Managing for Improved Corporate Performance
Generating great performance requires a more dynamic approach to building and adapting a company’s capabilities than merely squeezing its operations.
In the Fast Lane
Companies are trading in their spreadsheets for swifter, more powerful applications.
See It Now
New budgeting-and-planning software offers increasingly sophisticated visual aids: dashboards and scorecards.
Best Practice Doesn’t Equal Best Strategy
Benchmarking is an important way to improve operational efficiency, but is not a tool for strategic decision making. When competitors all try to play exactly the same game, declining margins are bound to follow.
Scrubbing the Numbers
Cleaning up the balance sheet boosts year-end cash flow, but it can leave some messy problems.
Forget Black-Scholes?
Why the traditional option-pricing model may not be the best way to value employee grants.
The Great Hollowing-out Myth
Outsourcing to other countries has become a hot political issue in America. Contrary to what John Edwards, John Kerry and George Bush seem to think, it actually sustains American jobs.
The Enforcer
If audit firms don’t voluntarily improve their processes, PCAOB chairman William McDonough promises he’ll make them.
Stand by Me
While finance and IT don’t always see eye to eye, many companies have learned how to transform a mere reporting relationship into a true partnership. Could this be the path to genuine alignment?
Less Ado about Options
An alternative valuation model could dampen the controversy over expensing employee stock options.
The Doubt of the Benefit
Voluntary benefits may seem like a win-win. Here’s why they could be a lose-lose.
Your Finance Department Is Second-Rate
Not certain how your finance department stacks up? Here are ten markers of mediocrity.
Now Hiring
Finance departments will add staff for many reasons, but particularly as a preparation for growth.
Keys to Successful BPO Relationships
Outsourcing business processes hits much closer to home than simply outsourcing IT. Here’s how some executives balance the risks and rewards.
Squeeze Play
Forget steroids. It’s spending that has baseball in a bind.
Are Your Interview Skills in Tune with the Times?
Guidelines to help you prepare for a major shift in the interviewing process.
So, Why Be Public?
This is a question more and more companies have been asking. Many of the traditional advantages of being public are no longer valid, and the mounting costs all the more obvious.
Favorite Questions of Executive Recruiters
Helpful hints for hitting a curveball out of the park.
Pricing New Products
Companies habitually charge less than they could for new offerings. It’s a terrible habit.
Stingers: The 2004 State Tax Survey
Tough times can make for tense relations between corporate tax executives and state tax authorities. Our survey suggests that even if economic conditions improve, the stage is set for more contentiousness than ever.
Looking under the Hood
New attestation standards for internal controls put more power in the hands of auditors.
Fly out of That Pigeonhole
Don’t stay cooped up in finance. Take a broader view of your company and you’ll have a better opportunity to broaden your career as well.
Whistle-Blower Woes
Many companies think the whistle-blower provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley will spark nuisance suits by disgruntled employees. The truth is far more complex.
Avoiding Decision Traps
Cognitive biases and mental shortcuts can lead managers into costly errors of judgment.
Your Place or Mine?
Telecommuting can produce real savings, but employees are now reluctant to cut the cord. Should companies do it for them?
Making It Work
How to avoid some common offshoring blunders — and what to do when you can’t.
Off the Shelf: The 2004 Working Capital Survey
Low inventories drove down working capital last year. But will that continue as the economy improves?
How to Outsource Yourself to Your Former Employer
Longing to join that crowd of free agents, but don’t know where you’d turn to find that crucial first client? Take a look around your office. Tip number 1: Don’t be overly grateful to your boss.
Offshoring by the Numbers
Results of our survey of 275 finance executives at a broad range of companies.
Amazon Finally Clicks
Ten years old and profitable at last, it offers a textbook lesson on how to be both focused and flexible.
SEC Staff Mulls Compliance Delays
Commission’s chief accountant says accounting reform has overloaded auditors and corporate clients.
How Following Orders Can Harm Your Career
Asked by her bosses to make false accounting entries, a midlevel accountant balked, then caved. Her solid career took a sudden turn in a very sorry direction.
How to Run a Company Well
Ten commandments for successful leaders.
You Bought It, Now Audit
Your technology infrastructure can be audited — and probably should be.
New Carrots, Old Yardsticks?
Cash is back in incentive compensation, but companies are struggling to set the right performance targets.
Big Four Losing Ground to Smaller Firms
Public companies left the largest auditors in droves last year in favor of smaller firms.
They Might Be Giants
It’s been nearly two years since Arthur Andersen went under and Sarbanes-Oxley was passed. Have the Big Four audit firms changed since then?
Back on Course
Whether your career seems to have gone adrift, or whether you’ve run afoul of some reputational mishap, here’s how you can set your ship in order.
A New Era in Corporate Governance
Directors and investors are demanding reform. Companies had better prepare for it.
Haven or Hell?
The IRS wants to crack down on multinational corporations that transfer U.S. intellectual property to tax havens.
Compensation and Cash Flow
Why many companies are using metrics from the cash flow statement, and not just the income statement, to measure annual performance and award bonuses.
Where Material Weaknesses Really Matter
Some experts believe that during the 2005 annual-report season, many companies may be required to report material weaknesses in their internal controls — and that those disclosures will hurt those companies’ credit ratings and share prices.
New CFOs: the First 100 Days
Landing a top finance job is only the beginning. Focusing on the big picture is the key to success, according to a new survey.
Great Expectations
How today’s corporate training programs are grooming tomorrow’s CFOs.
Break Up the Big Four?
It may be time to split up the largest accounting firms.
The Lunatic You Work For
If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath?
Internal Rate of Return: A Cautionary Tale
Tempted by a project with high internal rates of return? Better check those interim cash flows again.
Drowning in Data
A flood of corporate data, intensified by Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, threatens to overwhelm business managers.
But Can You Teach It?
No form of education is more commercialised than management education. But are business schools teaching the right things?
Control(ler) Issues
How to meet the needs of a growing business — and the demands of new regulations — without burning out the finance staff.
The Two Faces of Bank Mergers
Corporate customers should look beyond the rhetoric of consolidation’s advantages.
Losing the HP Way
Two years after Carly Fiorina pulled off a transforming merger, Hewlett-Packard looks huge, frail and confused.
Does Microsoft Need China?
The tech giant is on the rebound, but its future may lie in how it decides to adapt its pricing model to the developing world.
Worst Day Ever
Three CFOs share the lessons they learned from their toughest experiences on the job.
How Audits Must Change
Auditors face more pressure to find fraud.
Private Equity’s New Challenge
A changed competitive landscape calls for a different business model.
Investment Banks Outsourcing to India
A number of big names have quietly hired Indian firms or set up their own subsidiaries on the subcontinent to handle basic financial modeling and comparable analysis.
Raiding the Returns
Hidden costs and high fees eat into 401(k) plan benefits.
Losing Battles
Two decades of failed Pentagon financial reforms put more than just dollars at risk.
The Reality of Real-Time Reporting
New, superfast 8-K rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act could spawn problems with mergers, loan covenants, and share prices. Needed: a solid risk-management plan.
The Great Divide
Or, what your CIO would really like to say to you if only the job market were better.
How 51 Gorillas Can Make You Seriously Rich
Or, why so many business books are awful.
The ABC’s of ERP
To maximize the return on this massive software investment, plenty of planning is needed, even if you’ve been using ERP for years.
The View from the East
India’s upstart IT-services firms face their own challenges from their giant rivals in the West.
Watch How You Think
Insights from behavioral finance could change the way companies approach mergers and acquisitions.
The Second Six: Ready to Step Up?
The largest of the Group B accounting firms are facing new challenges and enjoying new opportunities.
Bribes and the Balance Sheet
Revved up by Sarbanes-Oxley and M&A due diligence, regulators are coming down hard on corrupt practices involving the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals.
Switching Industries
A new survey reports that 75 percent of all finance executives looking for new jobs are seeking new sectors.
Truth and Consequences
Why tough ”360” reviews and employee ranking are gaining fans.
Exploding the Myths of Offshoring
Far from damaging the economy of the United States, offshoring should enable its companies to direct resources to next-generation technologies and ideas — if public policy doesn’t get in the way.
Building Your ”Kitchen Cabinet”
Here’s how to develop your own circle of trusted advisors while avoiding conflicts of interest.
Will Real Options Take Root?
Why companies have been slow to adopt the valuation technique.
Internal Auditors Find Control Gaps
Most companies have flaws in their framework for complying with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, survey finds.
Bouncing Back
The economy may be on the mend, but for financial executives, the job opportunities aren’t so great.
You Shouldn’t Take the Job
Thinking about accepting that offer? Here are ten signs you’d be better off taking a pass.
Of Men and Mice: An ERP Case Study
CFO Lee Wilbur explains how Jackson Laboratory is dealing with the challenges of installing its new ERP system.
How to Improve Performance Management
Selecting the proper technology is a start — but for a successful implementation, don’t ignore these four important steps.
