Sometimes you work with people who are evil. Most of us have no filter for that, no way to process this. We are brought up with a belief that if we are not good, we want to aspire to be good, we want to become better. If we work harder, smarter, faster, with more compassion and empathy, we will be fine in the end. We believe convenient self-affirming lies that confirm this, and live on the hope that things will work out for the better. 

As CFO, our role is to ensure that the company gets the truth. Mostly in the numbers, the numbers which boil down to ebitda, cash flow, profit and loss vs. budget, plan and past performance. And a myriad of ancillary reports used to control expenses, labor cost, purchases, inventory and people. Getting the numbers right is the primary focus. Commentary is important, but not as important as getting the numbers right.

I like numbers, and I like people. Numbers don't intrinsically lie, but some people do. Every system needs to be designed to ensure that the lies people add, the spin, is seen as the spin and not as a fact. The problem is that some people, are just plain evil. And no system designed by a human can defeat relentless evil. Evil comes in many forms, but rarely does evil want to look evil. Elon Musk’s remark, “What I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil,” is something we all see everyday. No surprise really that many folks, if not most of your co-workers, actually care more about looking good, than being good. As CFO you need to create a system of unbiased, impartial controls that ensure that how things are matter more than how things look.