The seat readiness checklist for chief officers and directors

Readiness for a top seat is not measured by subject knowledge. Every chief financial officer knows finance and every chair has read the governance code. Readiness is measured by whether the holder can answer, today and in their own words, the questions the seat is judged on: the decisions that arrive without precedent, with incomplete numbers, and with everyone watching.

The sections below take one seat at a time and list the questions that seat alone must carry. They are drawn from the decisions each seat is judged on and are deliberately answerable without a technical brief. Read them as a sitting officer, as a confirmed successor, or as the board that will appoint the next holder. A hesitation is information: it marks the decision the holder has been receiving rather than making.

The chief financial officer#

• Where did capital actually go last year, and why; and which project did you kill professionally, with numbers?
• Can you carry the same version of the truth to the board, to investors and to the regulator, at three different altitudes, in a quarter when the truth is unwelcome?
• What does the audit committee need from you before it asks, and what does the chief executive need from you as a counterweight rather than a partner?
• Does the finance function close faster, forecast better and cost less than it did when you took the seat; and which technology decisions did you own rather than receive?
• Which of your deputies could hold the seat, and what would it take?

The chief risk officer#

• Name a decision in the last year that the risk appetite statement changed. If none, what does the business actually feel as a boundary?
• How do independence, reporting lines and the second line operate under commercial pressure, as opposed to how the chart draws them?
• When does your veto exist, and how would you spend it without spending the seat?
• What is your standing discipline with the regulator, and where is the line between partner and check on the chief executive axis?
• In the hours after a risk materialises, what is your sequence: information, escalation, the record kept; and how would you rebuild the credibility of the models, the function and yourself afterwards?

The chief operating officer#

• Is the operating model end-to-end or functional, was that chosen or inherited, and what is it costing?
• Which make, buy or partner decisions will the institution live with for a decade, and which of them did you make?
• Where does digital change the model rather than the process, and can you show where the strategy cannot run on the current model?
• What is your cadence of metrics and reviews, and can you point to a behaviour it changed; and which cost programme stuck, and why?
• When the institution stops, who commands, and is operational risk and continuity your standing brief or an annual paper?

The chief people officer#

• Does the people agenda arrive in the executive committee as strategy or as administration, and what is the explicit people bet behind the current strategy?
• For the executive talent market, what does buy, build and keep truly cost, and which did you choose last year?
• Would the last pay decision survive both the remuneration committee and the newspaper?
• How is culture measured honestly, how is it reported to the board, and what happened in the last case involving a top performer?
• Is executive succession a standing discipline or an emergency, and can the board defend the pipeline it has been shown?

The chief information officer#

• What does the run-grow-transform mix say about the institution, and is that what the board thinks it is investing in?
• Which build, buy or rent decisions, including cloud concentration, are balance-sheet commitments, and does the board read them that way?
• What does the legacy question cost, honestly, and what is the deliberate sequence for retiring it?
• For AI and data, who owns each asset, what controls exist, and what return has been shown; and what should the board ask that you would rather volunteer first?
• Who answers for cyber: you, the security officer or the board; and what happens on the day the institution stops?

The chief marketing officer#

• Where does growth actually come from, across portfolio, pricing and channels, and is that backed by customer evidence the board can trust rather than opinion?
• Which metrics have you and the chief financial officer both signed?
• What is the brand worth and what is its risk, read at board altitude; and what happens to it in the bad week?
• Which positioning decision did you treat as the investment decision it is?
• What is the one page a board actually reads from you, and what does the marketing operating model, agencies, in-house and AI, cost the institution?

The director and the chair#

• What do fiduciary duty, care and loyalty require of you in the decision on this month’s agenda, and what would a defensible dissent look like in the minutes?
• What did the last board pack not volunteer, and how did you get it?
• When did the numbers last deserve distrust, and what did you do?
• For the chair: which decisions never make it onto the agenda, and why; who in the room is silent and who is dominant; and where is the line between support and challenge on the chief executive axis?
• Does the board’s evaluation change behaviour or file a report, and is the board composed for the strategy it has approved?

The audit committee#

• Where in the statements does management judgement hide, in estimates and provisions, and which of those did the committee interrogate this year?
• What would a later restatement reveal about the numbers you signed, and who on the committee would have seen it?
• Is external audit independent in substance, not only in appearance; and does internal audit have the charter, resourcing and private session that give the third line teeth?
• When the two audit relationships disagreed, what did the committee do?
• What happens in the first meeting after a fraud allegation, and do people actually trust the whistleblowing channel the committee oversees?

A hesitation is information: it marks the decision the holder has been receiving rather than making.

How to use the checklist#

Run the list against one seat before running it across the executive floor. Most of what it reveals will appear in the first, while it is still cheap to address. Answer in writing and in your own words; an answer that needs the technical brief is a decision being received rather than made. Used by a board or a nomination committee, the same list becomes a succession instrument: it states what the next holder of the seat will be expected to carry, and it gives the assessment of internal candidates a standard that is neither political nor vague. Each seat on this list has a programme built around exactly these questions in The Helm, the BIZENIUS executive and board series, admitted by application.