In 2025, 10.26% of sitting CEOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 firms came directly from the CFO role. That’s the highest level of CFO-to-CEO promotions seen in a decade. The secret behind long-tenured CFOs who have successful transitions to CEO? A strong and strategic chief accounting officer.
With the help of artificial intelligence, the CAO role is shifting to become a crucial lever for the CFO. By delivering thoughtful assessments and analysis of data, CAOs are enabling CFOs to spend more time focusing on operational strategy and business growth.
Manual burnout of the CFO role
The transition from CFO to CEO is much more challenging when finance leaders lack a supportive partner that analyzes the financial insights from close cycles. They become tied down in detailed review and analysis, digging into variances and questioning evolving trends to validate performance.
While AI has helped to automate many manual financial processes in accounting, it doesn’t interpret the “so what” behind the numbers. If the CAO doesn’t provide these thoughtful assessments, the CFO remains the default analyst, stuck supervising the integrity of the cycle.
Instead of being a driver of growth, CFOs risk becoming custodians of accuracy, spending their days being reactive, answering “what happened” rather than “what should we do next.” The strength of CAO support is more than just supporting internal finances; it also shapes the leadership development of the CFO.
The CAO support gap
As companies scale, the complexity of financial oversight compounds. Without the right systems in place, this can cause the CAO to become mired in the weeds of accounting and unable to provide the analysis the CFO requires to be a strategic leader.
This lack of support is what can make a CFO unpromotable. To take the reins of CEO, the CFO must spend the time working alongside them, learning the business’s operational strategies and levers—not getting pulled back into financial oversight.
In high-growth environments, this friction causes enterprise risk. When the CFO becomes the default checkpoint to validate financial details, it risks slowing decision-making at the exact moment the business needs to move faster. This drags down company agility and undermines the chances of those aiming for the top spot.
CFOs recognize this problem and believe that over half of their time (53%) should be spent on strategic planning rather than day-to-day operations (47%). A CFO’s core value lies in building a finance function that drives forward-looking decision-making.
The CAO now has a seat in the C-suite
The way out isn’t more automation—it’s a structural change in how finance leadership operates. Closing this gap requires companies to rethink the CAO role not as a back-office accounting function, but as an influential voice within the C-suite.
With AI automating mundane accounting functions like accruals, the CAO and their team finally have the bandwidth to focus on high-level data analysis. This shift brings better capital allocation and greater operational agility, transforming the finance department from a reporting center into a forward-looking growth engine.
By becoming a proactive analyst, the CAO can answer the CFO’s questions before they’re even asked, instead of just handing over raw financials.
Finding the CAO’s executive voice
To successfully navigate this transition and bridge the gap between technical accounting and executive strategy, modern CAOs should focus on three foundational pillars:
- Perception shift: CAOs need to shift their perception that their work ends once the financials are reported to become an active advocate that translates reporting outputs into insights that can help inform business strategy and growth. To remain relevant in the age of AI, the CAO must evolve from being the custodian of the data to the interpreter of the data.
- Scaling infrastructure: When a company’s growth starts to outpace its people, processes and systems, organizations face reactive risks. To avoid this, the CAO can ensure that these areas scale in unison by anticipating the changes before they happen and become a crisis. This is made possible by proactively managing the balance between growth and the underlying financial foundation.
- Cultivating digital literacy: CAOs must bridge any skills gaps within the accounting team to move away from manual processes and get the full value from AI tools. This involves upskilling teams to move beyond transactional data entry and start applying critical thinking and healthy skepticism to AI outputs. By fostering a culture of technical fluency, the CAO ensures the entire department is equipped to provide the high-level analysis that drives C-suite decision-making.
The road to the CEO promotion
Fostering this strategic partnership between the CAO and CFO will allow the CFO to focus on operational skill development. By following these strategies, the CAO provides the reliable foundation that gives the CFO the professional room to transition from a finance-focused leader to a business-focused leader. The CFO will then have the ability to spend more time working side-by-side with the CEO, preparing the transition into the top role.
Looking ahead, the emergence of a new C-suite partnership between the CAO and CFO represents more than a shift in financial reporting—it signals a new model for driving enterprise value. As AI becomes the foundation for autonomous finance, finance teams will increasingly serve as the engine of business agility. By building this infrastructure today, modern CAOs ensure that when CFOs step into broader leadership roles, they leave behind not just clean books, but a scalable organization ready for its next stage of growth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michelle Stalick is chief accounting officer at BlackLine, a provider of financial management technologies for businesses.
Photo credit: Freepik
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