Beyond Accounting Bitesize

Ask any CFO whether the pressure has increased in recent years and you'll get the same answer: absolutely. The harder question is what you do when that pressure turns ethical — when you're asked to act against what you believe.
In part 5 of The Evolving Role of the CFO, Nikita Klassen and Bambo Bamgbose unpack:
•     Why pressure keeps rising — and how enjoying the build, and seeing progress, makes it sustainable
•     The honest limits of codes of conduct and guardrails: you can't control humans with policy alone
•     What actually helps in the moment: strong leadership relationships, peer forums — and a surprising new sounding board, an AI "board of directors" that debates the issue for you
•     The moral compass test: navigating demands where you're effectively asked not to believe your own eyes
•     Real examples of professionals who chose to walk away rather than comply — and why that courage matters to the whole profession
Essential listening for anyone who has ever felt conflicted at the top table.
Brought to you by CAW Network USA in partnership with IESBA and Fordham University.

AI is already inside the finance function — writing the code finance teams couldn't write themselves, doubling personal productivity, and compressing years of experience into moments. But leverage cuts both ways.
In part 4 of The Evolving Role of the CFO, the full panel unpacks:
•     Matthew Williams on unlocking non-ledger data with warehouses, Power Query and AI-written SQL — and why the narrative must never outrun the data
•     Bambo Bamgbose on the double-edged sword in government contracting: cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and AI-drafted bids that miss the compliance quirks only experience catches
•     Nikita Klassen on doubled efficiency — and the fear of not bringing the team along, as research tasks that once developed juniors get answered in seconds
•     David Wray on over-reliance: why the graduating generation could leapfrog today's leaders, and why the real job now is teaching people how to think and to form expectations for the data
•     The new specialisms — data engineers and analytics experts — reshaping the finance function the CFO relies on
Essential listening for leaders working out how to capture AI's upside without losing judgment — or the next generation.
Brought to you by CAW Network USA in partnership with IESBA and Fordham University.

The CFO's job description is quietly being rewritten. What was once a role built on financial stewardship now stretches into enterprise strategy, data, people, risk and trust — and most of it was never taught in an accounting program.
In this opening episode of our 6-part series, The Evolving Role of the CFO — recorded live in New York with the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) and Fordham University — host David Powell introduces your panel: David Wray, IESBA Board Advisor; Nikita Klassen, CFO of The Westaim Corporation; Bambo Bamgbose, fractional CFO and Head of Executive Services at British-American Consulting; and Matthew Williams, Divisional CFO at Everest Insurance.
Together they unpack:
•     What IESBA's global round tables reveal about the shift from financial steward to strategic leader
•     How you prepare for responsibilities — cybersecurity, IT, people management — that no accounting qualification covers
•     Why strategy, capital, risk and controls should work like a traffic-light system: no green lights, no go
•     What changes in SMEs and government contractors, where the CFO wears every hat from day one
•     Getting ahead of the numbers — putting data in decision-makers' hands sooner, and stopping business models built on a napkin figure
Essential listening for any finance leader whose role keeps growing faster than the job description.
Brought to you by CAW Network USA in partnership with IESBA and Fordham University.

Ethics isn't a policy document — it's a muscle, and muscles need exercise. In the final episode of The Evolving Role of the CFO, the panel gets practical about keeping ethical leadership sharp.
The panel unpacks:
•     Workplace simulations and role-play refreshers that make ethics engaging rather than a tick-box exercise
•     Topical case studies — and a Sunday reading list cascaded through the whole team
•     Alan Mulally's famous stoplight charts at Ford: when every department reports green while the company loses billions, the dissonance is the ethics signal
•     What disciplinary case reports teach — and why those stories belong in the C-suite conversation
•     The AI green light problem: why projects labelled "AI" shouldn't get waved through, and the value of being the one who says "hang on"
It all comes back to the same foundation: honesty, and the trust it earns. That's a wrap on the series — watch the full webinar at cawnetworkusa.com.
Brought to you by CAW Network USA in partnership with IESBA and Fordham University.

Cybersecurity. Data governance. People leadership. Strategy. None of these were on the syllabus when most accountants qualified — and yet they now land squarely on the CFO's desk.
In part 3 of The Evolving Role of the CFO, David Wray, IESBA Board Advisor, unpacks:
•     The functions CFOs must now understand beyond finance — from cybersecurity and data privacy to data governance and HR
•     Why "soft skills" is the wrong name: people skills are the hard ones
•     The journey from technical leader to people leader to strategic leader — and why no accounting program teaches it
•     A question straight from IESBA's global round tables: is it ethical to accept a CFO role when you don't yet have every skill it requires?
•     Managing the gap — knowing what you don't know, relying on the right people, and closing it deliberately
Essential listening for anyone stepping up to a CFO role — or deciding whether they're ready to.
Brought to you by CAW Network USA in partnership with IESBA and Fordham University.