The CFO and the CIO: How the Relationship Gets Built, and Why It Breaks Down
Dave Marberger
Speaker
What the evening is
A small, curated group of senior technology leaders
No vendors. No slides. No agenda beyond the conversation
Off-the-record, peer-to-peer
About the Event
Ask a room of senior technology leaders where they would like to report, and one answer gets ruled out before anyone has described the job. It is seldom the CEO who gets ruled out, and seldom the COO. It is the CFO, and for many leaders that is not a preference but a disqualifier, settled before the opportunity has even been described. The instinct is understandable, and it is also one of the few assumptions in our field that almost never gets examined from the other side of the relationship.
Dave Marberger has been a CFO for 25 years. He has had technology report to him by design, and once because a CEO moved the line, a transition he describes as bumpy and on which he holds strong views. He also remembers when finance was the back office, judged on accuracy rather than trusted with judgment, and what it took for that to change.
Most conversations about the CFO and the technology leader stay inside margin and expense, which is the smallest version of the subject. Dave is willing to talk about the larger one: what turns a CFO from an approval gate into a genuine business partner, why technical command alone has never been enough to earn that, and how the technology function looks from a seat where money, credibility and enterprise priorities are actually decided.
It is a peer evening rather than a panel, with one table, roughly a dozen senior technology leaders of large and complex organizations, the Chatham House Rule, and no vendors in the room. The conversation goes where the questions take it.
Together We Solve.