Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Why CFOs must bridge finance and tech teams to realize AI’s full value

Good morning. Many chief financial officers are investing in AI while still taking a measured approach—one that may seem overly cautious from the perspective of chief information and technology officers.

EY’s newly released 2025 Technology Risk Pulse Survey, based on responses from more than 400 U.S. executives at companies with over $1 billion in annual revenue, reveals a growing gap between finance and technology leaders on AI priorities.

According to additional data shared with CFO Daily, 56% of CFOs vs. 70–72% of CIOs and CTOs say AI integration is a top priority over the next two to four years. EY said this gap reflects financial caution that could slow innovation and lead to siloed AI development—raising compliance risks and stalling progress. The survey also found that 77% of CFOs are focusing their AI efforts on financial reporting, while 83% of CIOs are prioritizing IT infrastructure.

Jim Okas, EY Americas’ deputy technology risk leader, and Daryl Box, assurance technology risk leader, explained that CFOs must act as strategic enablers of transformation, aligning investment across finance and tech.

Siloed AI efforts, Okas warned, can lead to compliance failures, redundant spending, and missed innovation opportunities. To avoid this, CFOs, CIOs, and CTOs should align on shared principles, manage risk jointly, and ensure tech investments support the enterprise as a whole, he said.

CFOs can help scale AI by focusing on use cases that drive efficiency and strategic insight, Box advised. By measuring AI’s ROI and tracking its impact on compliance, productivity, and cost, finance leaders can also build trust across the C-suite, he added.

Governance and assurance take center stage
Despite AI’s strategic promise, governance remains a top concern. Eighty-one percent of executives, overall, rated the Sarbanes–Oxley Act and Internal Control over Financial Reporting as “very” or “extremely important,” and 78% cited System and Organization Controls (SOC) reporting as critical to audit readiness, according to the report.

However, EY shared that among CFOs, the focus is sharper: 90% ranked SOC reporting as a high priority. The firm calls this a sign of “financial anxiety”—a desire to strengthen oversight before expanding automation and AI adoption. The survey underscores a central tension: how to innovate responsibly without weakening cyber resilience or regulatory integrity.

For CFOs, the question is no longer if they’ll adopt AI—but how to do it with control.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

***Upcoming Event: Join us for our next Emerging CFO webinar, Optimizing for a Human-Machine Workforce, presented in partnership with Workday, on Nov. 13 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET.

We’ll explore how leading CFOs are rethinking the future of work in the age of agentic AI—including when to deploy AI agents to accelerate automation, how to balance ROI tradeoffs between human and digital talent, and the upskilling strategies CFOs are applying to optimize their workforces for the future.
You can register here. Email us at CFOCollaborative@Fortune.com with any questions.

Leaderboard

Earl Ellis was appointed CFO of Panera Bread, a fast-casual restaurant chain. Ellis most recently served as EVP and CFO at ABM Industries. During his tenure, he led global finance, accounting, investor relations, and procurement, helped shape the company's strategic plan, and executed a multi-year transformation including ERP modernization. Before ABM, Ellis held senior finance leadership roles at Best Buy, including CFO of Best Buy Canada and SVP of finance in the U.S., Canadian Tire, Campbell Soup Company, Kraft Foods, and Coca-Cola.

Steve Shinn was appointed VP and CFO of The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace), effective Oct. 20. Shinn recently served as acting CFO at NASA during the presidential transition and brings more than 25 years of experience. Shinn held increasingly responsible roles over the course of his 15-year career at NASA, including deputy CFO, deputy CFO for center operations, and CFO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Before that, he was responsible for all business and project control functions and the annual business planning for the space department at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Big Deal

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage on October 20 that disrupted the websites of several major businesses, including Snapchat, Hulu, crypto exchange Coinbase, and the online brokerage Robinhood. The issue has since been resolved, according to AWS. The outage began early in the morning when a surge of reports on Downdetector indicated widespread problems with AWS, which in turn affected hundreds of services relying on its cloud infrastructure. The company later confirmed that the disruption was caused by a Domain Name System (DNS) error affecting its US-East-1 region.

AWS posted on its Health Dashboard that “all AWS services returned to normal operations” at 6:53 p.m. ET on October 20.