Financial leaders at large organisations are falling well short of their own strategic ambitions
The executives responsible for stewarding capital and driving enterprise value are spending nearly half their time on operational tasks leaving little room for the strategic decision-making that their clients, boards, and advisors increasingly expect of them.
The EY Global DNA of the CFO Survey, which polled 1,610 chief financial officers and senior finance executives across organisations with annual revenues of at least US$1 billion, paints a picture of a profession in transition where the gap between aspiration and execution is widening, and where the consequences reach well beyond the finance department.
Sixty per cent of CFOs surveyed say they believe they should be defining and shaping value creation within their organisations. But only 26 per cent actually lead discussions on key value drivers, and just 25 per cent lead investment decisions where returns are uncertain. Only 27 per cent report that the broader business perceives finance as a strategic partner in value creation.
When CFOs are not at the table for high-stakes investment decisions, the rigour applied to those decisions can suffer and that has downstream effects on earnings quality, capital deployment, and ultimately the companies that sit in client portfolios.
The root cause, the survey suggests, is time. Approximately 47 per cent of a typical CFO's capacity is consumed by operational tasks such as regulatory compliance, financial reporting, and internal controls. The strategic work gets squeezed out.
Sixty-eight per cent of CFOs say they urgently need to reevaluate how their organisations measure enterprise value. Half admit they cannot effectively measure the value being created by new technologies, new roles, and new ways of working.
The top barriers cited include difficulty defining ROI upfront (50 per cent), standard financial metrics that fail to capture future value (49 per cent), and benefits that are indirect or exceed typical investment timelines (45 per cent).
AI readiness: financial services leads, but not by much
The survey's findings on artificial intelligence adoption offer a mixed picture for the financial sector. Financial services firms outpace most other industries, with 31 per cent of financial services CFOs rating their AI preparedness as leading or advanced, compared with 21 per cent across all sectors. But that still means nearly seven in ten financial services finance leaders consider themselves behind the curve.
More revealing is where AI is actually being deployed versus where the opportunity lies. CFOs are more likely to use AI defensively for fraud detection, risk assessment, and financial forecasting, than offensively. Less than half have meaningfully adopted AI for growth forecasting, dynamic pricing, or strategic data analysis, despite acknowledging the potential in each area.
The barriers are familiar: 61 per cent cite data quality and bias as the primary obstacle, followed by unclear long-term benefits (51 per cent) and lack of internal skills and capacity (50 per cent). With 80 per cent of CFOs expecting AI-enabled business models to feature significantly within their organisations within the next 12 months, the gap between intention and capability is closing fast — but it is not closed yet.
Transformation fatigue is real
Perhaps the most telling statistic in the entire report: only 12 per cent of CFOs say that their transformation outcomes over the past two years exceeded expectations. Forty per cent report that progress was slow or limited.
The EY research found that mindset, not technology or budget, is the primary differentiator between those who succeed and those who do not. Among the 12 per cent whose transformations succeeded, 42 per cent described their teams as highly adaptable. Among CFOs with less adaptable teams, only three per cent reported exceeding expectations.
Yet just 11 per cent of CFOs describe their teams as highly adaptable today, and only 13 per cent say their teams are proactive learners. Ten per cent express high confidence in working with new technology.
The talent constraint is compounding. Sixty-eight per cent of CFOs acknowledge that new skills and leadership styles are required but people and culture development ranks sixth on their list of personal development priorities. Thirty-eight per cent say they are evolving faster than their own leadership teams, and 50 per cent are calling for accelerated leadership development within finance functions.
The EY Global DNA of the CFO Survey, June 2026, was based on responses from 1,610 CFOs and finance executives across 40 countries, with supplementary in-depth interviews with 16 CFOs from global organisations.
