In 2025, many mid-market CFOs learned that the hardest part of the job was getting everyone to agree on the numbers. 

Finance leaders operated in an environment marked by high information volume, uneven confidence in data and sustained pressure to justify decisions with precision. The year reinforced how central the CFO has become to organizational coherence, not only as a steward of financial results but as the executive responsible for helping leadership teams agree on what the numbers mean and how to act on them.

Those were some themes that emerged from conversations with Dean Quiambao, a partner at accounting and consulting firm Armanino, and Nick Araco Jr., CEO and founder of the CFO Alliance. The two have first-hand experience working with a large number of mid-market CFOs. 

Finance chiefs in their networks spent much of the year resolving misalignment, enforcing discipline around efficiency and investment and maintaining momentum as decision-making processes grew more complex. What emerged over the year was a clearer picture of how mid-market CFOs were expected to create alignment, enforce discipline and keep organizations moving.

Alignment became a defining responsibility

Stakeholder alignment surfaced repeatedly as one of the most persistent challenges CFOs faced in 2025. Araco described it as the most common issue raised across CFO Alliance roundtables throughout the year, cutting across industries, ownership structures and growth stages. CFOs found themselves between the CEO, board and functional leaders as views on performance and priorities increasingly diverged.

Araco said the lack of stakeholder alignment was the most common challenge raised across CFO Alliance roundtables in 2025. CFOs routinely encountered situations where different teams arrived at the same meeting with different conclusions, often driven by inconsistent data sources or definitions. “My data says this, your data says that,” Araco said, describing a dynamic that slowed execution and created friction inside leadership teams. “Finance ends up in the middle of that.”

The challenge for CFOs, according to Araco, was interpreting and communicating the data. Many CFOs in his network found themselves reconciling discrepancies in timing, metrics and assumptions before the organization could move forward.

In volatile conditions, that reconciliation process became a core part of the job for many. Araco said many finance leaders showed up frustrated by the difficulty of creating momentum without consensus. “So many of our members showed up in 2025 with their hands on their heads shaking, saying, ‘How do I work through this?’” he said. “‘How do I create alignment or an ability for us to act when there’s a lack of alignment on where we go?’”

Quiambao observed a similar pattern among his client base, particularly in fast-growing companies where decision cycles were accelerating. The CFOs who stood out to him were those who engaged earlier and more broadly across the organization. “The CFO’s value now shows up before the decision is made,” Quiambao said. “It’s sitting with leaders ahead of the curve, defining the levers, the metrics and how success will actually be measured.”

Quiambao explained how that partnership required the finance leaders he worked with to move upstream in the decision process. He pointed to finance leaders who sat with product, engineering, marketing and HR leaders ahead of major initiatives to establish shared expectations around outcomes and measurement. 

“Success is coming from the CFO’s ability to sit with [other leaders] ahead of the decision and say, okay, this is what we’re thinking, these are the levers we think we need to pull, here’s the metrics we’re going to use to measure ROI and this is the impact we’re going to have on the business,” he said. “That’s where the real magic is happening.”

Automation and analytics raised expectations for finance in 2025, particularly around how quickly historical performance could be explained. “Explaining the past isn’t where the value is anymore,” Quiambao said. “Automation can do that. The mid-market CFO’s job this year became about framing the decision before it happens.”

Efficiency demanded discipline

Efficiency remained a central concern for mid-market CFOs in 2025, particularly for organizations operating with lean finance teams. What distinguished high performers was how intentionally they redesigned work. The year, according to both experts, highlighted a growing divide between CFOs who created space to rethink processes and those who stayed trapped in constant execution mode.

He said the reaction is common because many finance leaders still assume scale requires headcount. In this case, he said, the CFO was willing to rethink how the work got done. “The people who are succeeding had a lot of failure in their efficiency efforts, too,” Quiambao said. “But they were willing to get out there and do it.” What pushed those CFOs past the point of success was a willingness to challenge existing workflows. “They’re setting aside time for them and their teams to discuss and experiment,” he said. “What is a process that we think we can automate now and eliminate?”

Others struggled to find that space. Many finance leaders described being overwhelmed by volume and urgency, spending most of their time reacting rather than improving. Quiambao described a familiar mindset among CFOs who stalled. “[This particular CFO told me] it’s just so busy, it’s really hard, I’m inundated with information, and I’m just trying to keep up,” he said.

Araco framed the same issue through discipline. He said CFOs who attended his national roundtables were willing to invest in technology, but only under strict conditions. He said the efficiency view around new technology was “we’ll invest in technology, but only where returns are provable, and execution is tight.” That discipline extended beyond software selection. “This is not a tech play,” Araco said. “The smart CFO says, let’s begin with what we are trying to solve for.”

Understanding how work is done today, who owns it and what success looks like came first, particularly as CFOs evaluated cloud-native ERP platforms and AI-first finance tools entering the mid-market. Araco said skipping those steps was irresponsible and often missed the point of modernization altogether. “This year, if CFOs didn’t understand why they were innovating and what they were solving for, then they were being fools.”

Governance concerns reinforced that caution. While interest in newer, cloud-native platforms was real, CFOs continued to assess risk, audit readiness and long-term viability before committing core systems. “The CFOs in this day and age still believe they have a responsibility to assess the risk and governance side of the equation,” Araco said.

Capital discipline anchored decision-making

Capital discipline remained constant throughout 2025. Post start-up, pre-IPO CFOs focused on cash durability, capital efficiency and credible paths to sustainability regardless of ownership structure. Araco described a convergence of priorities across public companies, private companies and private equity-backed businesses. “It didn’t matter whether or not you were PE-backed, privately held or publicly traded,” he said. “Everyone was focused on trying to achieve solid and structured capital discipline.”

That focus reshaped how CFOs approached growth in 2025. Expansion decisions were tested against unit economics, cash durability and downside scenarios before moving forward. “Capital discipline is still the focus,” Araco said. Growth initiatives that could not demonstrate performance under pressure, Araco said, struggled to get approved.

That discipline carried directly into strategic planning. CFOs spent more time pressure testing assumptions, modeling downside scenarios and challenging optimistic projections as organizations looked for clarity around risk and resilience. Araco said the shift was visible across ownership structures and industries. “Everyone was focused on trying to achieve the same thing,” he said, describing a year in which CFOs were expected to evaluate decisions based on durability rather than momentum. Growth plans moved forward only after finance leaders could explain how they would hold up under stress, not just in ideal conditions.

Quiambao said that dynamic pulled CFOs deeper into strategy conversations that once sat primarily with CEOs, chief operating officers and chief technology officers. “You can’t lead the business the way you always have,” he said. He said the work of the CFO at the mid-market level shifted in 2025 from explaining variance to shaping direction, with the entire finance team playing a more active role in scenario planning and risk evaluation.

Data quality became central to that credibility. Both Quiambao and Araco said CFOs who could quickly produce clean, consistent answers to investor and board questions strengthened confidence in the organization’s readiness this year. Quiambao said the difference showed up most clearly during capital discussions and diligence. “Data is going to be the new currency,” he said. “If your data is garbage, you’ve handcuffed yourself.”

Araco echoed that theme from a governance perspective. CFOs were expected to support speed, but not at the expense of consistency or control. “Capital discipline is still the focus,” he said, noting that finance leaders within his circle said they felt as if they were increasingly judged on their ability to balance opportunity with restraint. The expectation was clean reporting, alongside a repeatable, defensible way to support decisions as conditions changed.

Across both interviews, the picture of the mid-market CFO in 2025 is consistent. This group of CFOs operated as stewards of alignment, discipline and credibility, extending their influence beyond finance into strategy, risk and organizational coordination. The role demanded judgment under pressure, clarity in the face of complexity and the ability to move the organization forward while managing risks and without losing control.