Artificial intelligence. Activist investors. Relentless board pressure for growth. And now, the CFO.
For CEOs already anxious about their job security, the list of threats now includes an entirely new concern: the C-suite executive most responsible for having their back. In a recent survey of CEOs at companies with between $100 million and $5 billion in revenue, one-quarter identified their own CFO as the greatest threat to their job security, the highest among any C-suite position, even outpacing the often second-in-command COO. “It underscores the insecurity many CEOs feel,” says David Larcker, director of the Corporate Governance Research Initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
CEOs are already under pressure from a host of areas, including trigger-happy boards pulling the plug on underperforming leaders. CEO turnover accelerated in the last two years, hitting a record high in 2025, before starting to slow this year.
"Misalignment between the CEO and CFO could erode trust and impact performance."
As a result of the turmoil, CFOs have gained more influence in the boardroom, says Kim Van Der Zon, vice chair of global board and CEO services at Korn Ferry. “Financial matters are at the top of the agenda for most boards,” she says. Indeed, the CFO is an essential partner to the CEO—the person responsible for protecting blind spots, translating strategy into financial reality, and maintaining credibility with the board. And now, many are starting to get uncomfortably close to directors. It’s no coincidence that, according to the survey, the three biggest concerns for CEOs are, in order, meeting growth targets, managing costs, and meeting the expectations of the board, all of which are crafted primarily by the CEO and CFO.
Patrick Walsh, a senior client partner in the Board and CEO Services practice at Korn Ferry, says, boards must be sure the CEO and CFO are aligned. When they are not, disagreement can quickly move beyond the management team and into the boardroom, says Walsh. CFOs have direct influence over capital allocation, strategy, and the company’s growth agenda, as well as their own channels to directors, audit committees, investors, and lenders. “The CEO and CFO have to move in lockstep,” says Walsh. “There can’t be any noise in that relationship.” Jeff Constable, coleader of the Global Financial Officers practice at Korn Ferry, agrees, adding that misalignment could ultimately divide the C-suite and push the board into “camps.” Instances of CFOs undermining CEOs in audit committee meetings or cozying up to an activist investor have happened, after all.
To be sure, the concern may be more in the CEO’s mind than anywhere else. Last year, CFO-to-CEO promotions accounted for about 10 percent of all CEO appointments. For his part, Larcker says that disagreements between CEOs and CFOs are a sign of healthy governance and attributes some of the perceived threat to recency bias. He also notes that aside from the COO, the CFO would be the next logical successor to the CEO among the C-suite positions in the survey. “I don’t think CEOs are looking over their shoulders at their CFOs and thinking ‘That guy wants to replace me,’” says Larcker. “I think it says more about how complicated the CEO role has become.”
