Tag: CFO as outside director

Should CFOs serve on outside boards?

When a company’s CFO serves on another company’s board, does it help or hurt the financial reporting of the CFO’s company? It’s easy to imagine that the time commitment associated with outside board service would be a distraction from the CFO’s primary job and ultimately impair the CFO’s performance—especially since, as reported in CFO.com, a majority of finance chiefs on outside boards are appointed to the time-consuming audit committee. But, according to an academic study, “CFO Outside Directorship and Financial Misstatements,” just published in Accounting Horizons, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Accounting Association (link is to a version on SSRN), that’s not the case. In fact, the study demonstrated that outside board service can actually enhance the quality of the financial reporting of the CFO’s company.