No Straight Lines to the Top
At Tribe Group's CFO Playbook event, three finance leaders shared the roads that took them into the CFO seat: Margaret Warrington, CFO at Summerset and formerly CFO at Stats NZ (government to tech to retirement, as she puts it); Amanda Yap-Choong, CFO at Aon New Zealand, who previously led finance strategy and investor relations at Westpac and was CFO at Southern Cross Benefits; and Stephen Morgan, GM of Finance and Commercial at Champion Flour Milling, whose career has taken him from L'Oréal in the UK through Tegel and Coca-Cola in New Zealand.
Between them, none of the three set out to become a CFO. What emerged instead was a shared pattern: the roles that mattered most rarely looked like promotions at the time.
The Experiences That Actually Prepared Them
For Stephen, the turning point was involuntary. When his CEO left, he found himself running the flour milling business for nine months, navigating customer negotiations, a wheat price shock from the Ukraine conflict, and a failed South Island harvest, all while still technically the finance lead. The technical skills didn't disappear when a country manager eventually took the CEO role back; what stuck was the comfort with sitting outside finance entirely.
Amanda's formative period was her first CFO role, at a travel insurance business, which she stepped into just as COVID hit. She had to manage an 80% workforce reduction in her first week, then rebuild the business through a period of hyperscale growth, taking the team from 200 down to 40, then back up to 500 by the time she left. With a small exec team, she found herself covering COO and risk responsibilities alongside the CFO brief, which gave her an unusually broad view of the business.
Margaret's view was blunt: CFOs are generalists first. She's led corporate services, people, and technology functions along the way, and once spent months working out how to safely demolish a building after it structurally failed at Stats NZ. Her point: the skills that matter most are rarely the ones taught in an accounting textbook. They're commercial judgement calls, like negotiating with a 12,000-truck client as a tech company's finance lead.
The Sideways Move That Paid Off
Each panellist pointed to a role that didn't look like progress at the time.
For Margaret, it was stepping down from CFO at Stats NZ to take a financial controller role at e-Road, a tech company, so she could prioritise family during COVID. She assumed she'd be bored. Instead, the exposure to capital markets, a takeover offer, and equity raises became the foundation for her later CFO role at the ASX/NZX-listed Summerset, a role she says she'd never have been ready for without it.
For Amanda, it was moving from a CFO title at Southern Cross Benefits into a non-CFO "head of" role at Westpac, on a mentor's advice that investor relations was a rare and valuable skill in the New Zealand market. It turned out to be exactly what positioned her for her current role, where investor relations experience was the deciding factor for her Hong Kong-based boss.
For Stephen, it was the reverse of an obvious step up: leaving a Financial Director title at L'Oréal for a Commercial Manager role at Tegel in New Zealand, trading a "value preservation" finance career for one built on value creation. It felt like a step back. It became the most enjoyable stretch of his career.
What to Look For in a Sideways Move
Asked what should give someone confidence to make a lateral move, the panel's advice: weigh industry exposure, personal life stage, and people fit over title. Margaret took the e-Road role partly because it was 20 minutes from home during a period her family needed that. Amanda emphasised being deliberate about which gaps in your toolkit a move will fill; for her, that meant seeking out industries and functions that would build skills like leading leaders and influencing. Stephen's advice shifted with age: early on he chased titles and status; now he prioritises complexity, breadth of experience, and simply enjoying the work.
Advice for Anyone Feeling Stuck
For finance managers and financial controllers wondering how to progress, the panel converged on one idea: get out of finance.
Amanda's test is a ratio: if you're spending more time with finance people than people outside finance, something's off. Finance is a lever for the business, not the destination; your future peer group is the CMO, CIO, CTO, and CEO, not other accountants.
Margaret pushed people to notice their own natural comfort zone and consciously work against it, citing a Myers-Briggs exercise early in her career that showed her whole finance team clustered in one personality quadrant, with her as the outlier. Her advice: put your hand up for everything outside your usual lane, and ask to shadow people, even when it feels uncomfortable to ask.
Stephen offered two mental models. The first: every piece of analysis should move through the what, the so what, and the what's next. Reporting on history is easy but recommending what to do about it is the skill that gets noticed. The second is the "four faces of the CFO" model (steward and operator at junior levels, strategist and catalyst for change as you progress), a useful way to self-assess where you're actually operating versus where you need to be.
What to Put Your Hand Up For
The consensus here was near-unanimous: everything. Stephen's rule is to take on whatever nobody else wants, whether that's an ERP implementation, an insurance claim, or anything else outside your comfort zone, because growth doesn't require changing companies, just refusing to stay static in the one you're in. Amanda's example: putting her hand up to fix an under-invested online channel at Southern Cross despite having no IT background. In her words, you should run towards the fire, not away from it.
Dealing with Imposter Syndrome
Asked how to shake it, none of the panel claimed to have solved it. Margaret described it as almost crippling at points in the past year, despite years of seniority. What's helped is being kinder to herself in the first year of any new role, and trusting her own preparation even when it doesn't feel like enough. Stephen shared feeling out of place among Oxford and Cambridge graduates early in his L'Oréal career, coming from what he described as a very different background. The shared message: it doesn't fully go away, it isn't only spoken about in women's forums even though it's often framed that way, and being open about it tends to surface a lot of "me too" in response.
How to Manage the Board
On the specific skill of influencing a board, Amanda was direct: preparation before the meeting is everything. If you haven't already spoken to key directors ahead of time, you're behind before you start, and she and her CEO make a point of dividing and conquering those conversations in advance. Stephen's approach, shaped by working for a Japanese parent company, is to remember the board are just people with their own context and interests; his board, for instance, wants economic context New Zealand boards wouldn't need. Margaret added a reframe worth holding onto: having sat on the other side of the table, none of them have ever wanted the person presenting to fail. Boards want you to succeed.
Ready to Become a CFO?
Asked to finish the sentence "you're ready to become a CFO when...", the answers converged on the same shift: from reporting the past to owning the future. Stephen's version: numbers become your input, not your output. Amanda's: you hold a full enterprise mindset and act as a true adviser bringing insight into the room, not just historical numbers. Margaret's: you think like an enterprise leader with a whole-of-business view, and you can say no and have a difficult conversation, respectfully.
Key Takeaways
There's no single path to CFO. Technical roles like Financial Controller aren't a prerequisite; commercial judgement and the ability to influence outweigh a defined career ladder.
Sideways and even backward-looking moves are often the ones that count most. Judge a move by the exposure and skills it builds, not the title attached to it.
If you're spending more time with finance people than non-finance people, that's a signal to change your ratio.
Volunteer for anything nobody else wants. Growth doesn't require leaving your organisation; it requires refusing to stay in your comfort zone within it.
Choose mentors for fit, not proximity or seniority. The most useful mentor is often one step removed from your own function.
Imposter syndrome doesn't fully disappear with seniority. It's near-universal, and talking about it openly tends to help more than trying to eliminate it.
Board and executive relationships are won before the meeting. Preparation and pre-alignment matter more than performance in the room.
The shift to CFO-readiness is a shift in orientation: from reporting the past to advising on the future.
This event was hosted by Tribe Group's Accounting and Finance recruitment specialist team. If you want to talk more about opportunities in Auckland, Wellington or beyond, get in touch.