The One Mistake That Finance Professionals Should Always Avoid

Once upon a time I made a huge mistake in my career, it was embarrassing, painful, I still cringe when I think of it but can smile a little now. But ultimately, I could have avoided all of this if only I’d headed Shakespeare’s lesson from Romeo & Juliet.

For those of you that might have not heard or partially heard the story before I offer a quick recap. A long time ago there were two youngsters, a boy and a girl in Medieval Italy. Their families hated each other, however the boy snuck into a party hosted by the girl’s family because he was kind of a chancer. The girl sees the boy, they fall instantly in love with each other. And so he sneaks into her garden and they decide to get married in secret the next day, because, for those more familiar with the story, their parents and families pretty much wished to wipe each other’s existence off the planet. Jump ahead a few days.

Their families find out about the marriage and as you can imagine, weren’t best pleased. Mercutio, a close relative, dies. The girl is so upset that she drinks a potion that will put her to sleep for two days. But, unfortunately, the young couple hasn’t learned the ins and outs of good marital communication yet, and the young girl totally forgets to mention something about it to her new husband.

On mistaking his new wife’s self-induced coma for suicide, the young man totally loses the plot and commits suicide, thinking he’s going to be with her in the afterlife. But then she wakes up from her short coma, only to learn that her new husband has committed suicide, so she has the exact same idea and kills herself too. The end.

Okay so the mistake I made wasn’t life or death, didn’t even involve romance, but helped me learn an important lesson particularly around communication.

My first ever job before I got into Finance & Accounting was in Field Sales and I’d recently been promoted to team leader, so when it came to reporting the numbers to the sales director my job was to collate them for the team and speak them into his voicemail box. I’d done all but one of the team members who said they’d do it last thing before they finished the week on Friday. I said fine, assumed he would, left it at that, then come Monday, let’s say I was greeted by a not very pleasant encounter from the sales director.

However after he’d calmed down he took the time to walk me through an important lesson. When we don’t communicate our assumptions and follow up, we make an Ass of You and Me.

In Finance & Accounting, whether it be the business, our clients, our stakeholders, the all look to us not to assume things, to reduce their risk, as well as any uncertainty best we can around decision making. Or even on the mundane tasks to make sure we’ve all the information like when submitting a tax return or giving an audit opinion.

So if you have to make an assumption, whether it be for a model or forecast because the data were not complete, or it was made for simplification purposes, or maybe even if someone has yet to submit their numbers or explanation for an outlook or return, communicate these assumptions, make them clear, and continue to follow up to check they’re genuine.

And that’s why we bring guest mentors onto our Strength in the Numbers Show, to learn from their mistakes, help you peer over the fence to see what’s worked and not worked for them to figure out how to better communicate. They deconstruct word for word and share with you their stories and hard-won lessons so that you can digest their knowledge to practically figure out how to solve more meaningful problems for your organisation and a rewarding career.

Did you ever make a mistake that you can see the funny side of now? Let's all contribute to make this another resource for other aspiring finance business partners so please like or add your comments below.

Some other articles on LinkedIn that might help:

One simple approach for accountants to engage more with others for better results

Getting Others To Use Your Insights

What IKEA Teaches Us About How to Become More Influential

Why Two Ears And One Mouth Can Lead To Stakeholder Value Creation

How Finance Can Add Value by Breaking Some Windows

The author Andrew Codd is the producer of the Strength in the Numbers Podcast which interviews real finance practitioners to break down their hard won lessons and deconstruct their practical methods that work on the job and which you won't typically find in textbooks or exams so that we create more influential finance professionals worldwide who solve meaningful problems for their organisations and in return have fun, rewarding and successful careers in finance.

Andrew also leads AVF Worldwide, which helps finance leaders and teams establish the necessary infrastructure around people, processes & systems to create more influential finance professionals who drive greater impacts for their organisations.