![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-2151309416.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The talk is over. In 2026, it\u2019s time to execute.<\/p>\n
When the CFO Alliance, a finance-professional peer community, released its\u00a0latest report, called Project Greenlight, in late November, the organization said that finance experts expect 2026 to be \u201cthe most pivotal year the finance function has faced in a decade.\u201d There\u2019s a lot at stake for CFOs and their organizations, according to the report, including supply-chain risks, pressure to make big AI investments, and the perils of stakeholder misalignment on strategy.<\/p>\n
CFO Brew recently spoke with Nick Araco, the CEO of CFO Alliance, to get a sense of why 2026 is shaping up to be a high-stakes year. He also shared what\u2019s top of mind for the finance leaders he\u2019s been speaking with.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n What makes you think that 2026 will be such a pivotal year in finance?<\/strong><\/p>\n 2026 has to be a year where we replace debate with data and execution. I call it \u201cinformed execution.\u201d We\u2019ve seen such a rapid acceleration, given AI and technology advancements, converge with a year of volatility and uncertainty. Imagine you\u2019re sitting in the seat of a CFO, where you\u2019re at the intersection of that, and you\u2019ve had a 2025 that\u2019s caused you and your enterprises to hit a pause button. You had months, if not a whole year of pause. 2026 has to be a year of execution.<\/p>\n How did the group that worked on the Project Greenlight report identify the top execution risks, and how did it lay out a roadmap for addressing each?<\/strong><\/p>\n What we did was convene about an hour-and-a-half\u2019s time and openly debated until we got to a point where we agreed on the most material and critical areas of risk. You can imagine we started with a laundry list, because the CFO Alliance population of almost 10,000 or more is very diverse\u2026At the end of the day, we identified four execution risks that most often stall plans, or stall action. [According to the report, these are geopolitical and regulatory disruption, technology and AI adoption, talent and team capabilities, and stakeholder alignment and governance.]<\/p>\n I want to focus on one specific risk: AI adoption. What would you say are the keys to identifying where an organization should be investing its money, but also how to track the ROI?<\/strong><\/p>\n A year ago at this time, I would tell you that nine out of 10 of our members were saying, \u2018We agree, it\u2019s time to lean in, and it\u2019s time to have the right discussions. Let\u2019s bring in cross-functional leaders and cross-level leaders, and let\u2019s make sure we are demonstrating comfort, and make sure that we\u2019re demonstrating through our own actions, an embrace.\u2019 Let me fast forward to where we are in 2025. These discussions need to be about enterprise value and performance. They need to be about, \u2018How would this impact our business?\u2019<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to be very specific as to what the discussions need to be and are, because our members are using the following framework around AI. \u201cWhat\u2019s the specific opportunity or pain point that we are attempting to address\u2026when it comes to AI? Why does it matter now? What\u2019s blocking our progress that we\u2019re even having this discussion? What\u2019s one condition, and if we solve for this, what would be different by X date, and how would we know it helped us?\u201d Those questions they\u2019re using in every conversation, so they can tie it back to value.<\/p>\n What have been the biggest recurring topics in your conversations with CFOs from the past two or three months?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are three key areas of focus: What type of leader do I want to be in \u201926? How do I best stand up the highest performing finance function? And that includes accounting, treasury, FP&A, and capital markets or strategy functions. And then, from an enterprise standpoint, am I really at the forefront of understanding how technology and AI may disrupt our position in our industry, or our industry or business as a whole?<\/p>\n Standing up a high-performing finance function and team [is] more complex than ever before. I\u2019m tired of the bashing of accounting\u2026No one can do their job in finance without a strong accounting function. We\u2019re done complaining about it; we\u2019re going to do something about it. We\u2019re going to try to make accounting sexy again by embracing the AI factor and bringing critical thinking into the accounting skill set.<\/p>\n This report was originally published by <\/em>CFO Brew.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Arrow #Button #Icon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The talk is over. In 2026, it\u2019… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3816,3817,3826,3827,3818,22,763,368,3828],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}