The best CFOs are always looking for feedback on how finance can better serve the business. Based on NetSuite’s Spring 2022 Survey data, there are four domains where peer executives see room for growth: communicating with stakeholders and employees, scenario planning and forecasting, collaborating to improve business functions and analyzing data.

Of the 10 skills we asked about, these were also areas with the biggest gaps between how CFOs rated themselves and how other executives, finance managers and departmental leaders graded them.

Finance heads should not see this as a slight on their expertise or abilities. First, much is expected of CFOs today, and a similar survey on others in the C-suite would likely have similar results. CFOs can also take comfort in knowing they generally earned high marks from their peers — finance leads scored lowest on communication, yet still just 17% of non-finance executives gave them the lowest rating of “could use work.”