Today’s CFOs are facing a growing crop of challenges, from persistent inflation to questions over how to best utilize emerging technologies such as AI.  

While there’s always been pressure associated with the top financial seat, the expanding scope of the role’s responsibilities, plus increased volatility in the business environment, is only compounding those pressures — leading to increased risk of burnout, as well as rising CFO turnover, said Jay Peir, head of strategy and interim CFO for Pigment, a business planning software provider.   

“I think the expanded importance and role of the CFO [to] a strategic partnership coupled with increasing pressure and change driven by volatility are both factors,” Peir said in an interview regarding CFO turnover.

Rising pace of change  

CFO turnover reached a six-year high this year, a trend occurring as the supply of finance talent continues to shrink as more and more experienced financial professionals retire, a recent survey by Russell Reynolds found.

While some of the turnover within the role is due to finance chiefs departing for board positions or to the CEO seat, CFOs are also faced with an expanded to-do list that could contribute to burnout. Today’s finance chiefs play an integral role in developing their companies’ strategies — including responding to shifting market developments, the top external risk on finance chiefs’ minds, according to Pigment’s 2025 Office of the CFO survey.

The evolution of the CFO role has also dovetailed with the accelerating pace of change in the global business environment, Peir said.

Companies had to pivot quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and since that point, “we've seen high inflation, supply chain disruption and geopolitical events…and then even this year, it seems as though every week or every day there's news where companies need to make decisions and need to pivot quicker than ever before,” he said. 

Peir has served in his current role at the Paris, France-based company since December 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to Pigment, Peir served as EVP, corporate development and strategy for Tableau Software, and logged an eight-year tenure at SunPower Corporation in roles including VP of corporate development and CFO.

Another factor increasing the pressure on finance chiefs is the dual mandate of both improving efficiency and lowering costs. While finance is often asked to identify efficiencies, available technologies have not “evolved at quite the same pace to support the extended scope and needs” of the finance team, Peir said.

Trust, but verify

Bringing in new technology could help CFOs to better tackle their growing list of responsibilities, both enabling more efficiency as well as helping to attract and retain top talent. In the face of an ongoing accountant shortage, employee recruitment and retention within the finance function remains top of mind for finance chiefs. 

According to Pigment’s survey, managers identified “inadequate technologies and tools” as one of the main reasons for attrition inside of their finance teams, with “work-life balance” and compensation emerging as other key factors. Those at the director level or above, meanwhile, pointed to compensation, business performance, and a lack of training or professional development as reasons behind departing finance employees.

One way CFOs could approach the issue of inadequate technology is by paring down the number of tools they use.The finance function, like other areas of businesses, typically taps multiple platforms for their daily operations — one such platform for budgeting or forecasting, another for financial planning and analytics and so on. However, that means “decision making is spread between those [platforms] where there's, many times, a lack of a single source of truth,” Peir said.  

As well as removing redundant or outdated technologies, CFOs could also utilize emerging tools like AI. Though finance chiefs are still interested in AI’s potential applications — with its potential usages for generating insights and automating manual tasks top of mind — the technology still remains on the list of top risks for CFOs, according to Pigment’s survey.

There’s an element of “trust, but verify” when looking at the technology for finance chiefs, Peir said, especially when it comes to ensuring good data governance and security.

“I think it's hard for finance to just receive an answer versus…having the underlying dynamics of the [forecasting] models or the rationale for the answer,” he said.