Ethical dilemma with fractional CFO offer
I feel very strongly that there needs to be an EXPERT/HUMAN between work produced by a junior (human or AI) and the actual client deliverable. No matter what the subject is. Tech, finance, communication etc etc. Everyone and their mother is fully capable of going to chat gee pee tee and maybe getting the right answer. The expertise of knowing what is right and WHY is more important than ever.
But I'm a tech guy. A fractional CTO. NOT a CFO. I am not the finance expert. Learned a bit while spending the last year building basically "Claude Code for accountants" in my role as VP of Product for an accounting firm.
When my client uses it, every output gets reviewed by a real accounting pro before anything ships. The accountant catches mistakes, the system logs the corrections, and over time the error rate keeps dropping. That part I feel good about.
One day the tool surfaced something that ended up saving one of my client's clients about 10% of their annual operating budget. Combine that with some understaffing on the client side, and the ask came in: would I temporarily step in as fractional CFO for that client?
I do have a finance degree. I've done a lot of startup financial modeling and business planning. I'm the only person who really understands what the tool did and didn't do. I raised the obvious "are you sure you want me, not an actual CFO?" question. They wanted me.
I'm as tired as you all are of explaining to people why they're unqualified to do your job. So I feel slightly embarrassed telling you I said yes.
The engagement went well. Client was thrilled.
But the part that's nagging me: on the bookkeeping side, the AI's work has an actual CPA reviewing every output. There IS a human-in-the-loop checkpoint. It's just not me. On the CFO side, when I was sitting in that seat, there was no equivalent rubber-stamp. The system was: me, with AI tools, making decisions that affected a real business.
I'm not sure if this is a real ethical issue or a really persistent case of imposter syndrome. Maybe both.
Should I have said no?