I Didn’t Choose the Spreadsheet Life — The Spreadsheet Life Chose Me

In 2025, I was nominated for a Datarails Office of the CFO Award.

I made a joke at the time that it was the closest thing Finance had to the Oscars.

I still think that is funny, mostly because our red carpet would be a hallway outside a conference room and somebody would be asking why the forecast changed while photos were being taken.

But the nomination made me think about something I care about more now than I did earlier in my career.

A lot of the best finance work is almost invisible when it is working.

Finance gets noticed when something breaks

A forecast misses badly. Cash gets tight. A board number does not tie. Close drags on. A lender asks a question nobody can answer.

Suddenly Finance is very interesting.

The months where the books close cleanly, the forecast explains the business, cash is understood and management gets useful answers?

Those rarely produce dramatic stories.

That is probably a good thing.

Good finance infrastructure is a little like plumbing. Nobody congratulates it for being there. Everyone develops strong opinions when it stops working.

I used to confuse difficulty with value

There is a particular kind of pride Finance people can take in surviving terrible processes.

We stayed until midnight. We rebuilt the file. We reconciled three systems manually. We got the board deck out.

I understand the pride.

I have also become much less impressed by recurring heroics.

If the same process requires a rescue every month, the rescue is not the achievement anymore.

The achievement is redesigning the process so nobody needs rescuing.

The spreadsheet is usually not the real problem

Excel gets blamed for a lot of organizational behavior it did not create.

Multiple versions of truth. Unclear ownership. Weak definitions. Manual handoffs. Systems that do not integrate.

Excel often becomes the place where those problems meet.

That makes the workbook messy.

But replacing Excel without fixing the underlying decisions can give you the same confusion in a more expensive interface.

I love better tools.

I just want to know which problem we are buying them to solve.

There is a strange dignity in making numbers boring

I mean that sincerely.

When a CFO asks for revenue and nobody argues about the definition, that is progress.

When the forecast updates without a weekend of manual work, progress.

When Accounting and FP&A reconcile actuals before the management meeting, progress.

When a business leader brings bad news early because Finance is useful rather than punitive, that may be the biggest progress of all.

None of those moments looks like a superhero movie.

Thank God.

The people behind the models matter more than the models

Finance careers are full of technical milestones.

First model. First budget. First board deck. First system implementation. First time someone trusts you with a number that really matters.

Eventually I think the more interesting milestones become human.

Can you explain something complicated without making the other person feel stupid? Can you tell a leader their assumption is weak without turning the conversation into a contest? Can you admit when you do not know?

Technical competence earns entry.

Judgment and trust are what make the work useful.

Award language and finance reality are very different genres

Awards use words like innovation, transformation and leadership.

Finance reality sometimes looks like discovering that a source file changed column order.

Both can be true.

Transformation is often a series of unglamorous decisions: standardize the definition, remove the manual step, document the assumption, automate the reconciliation, stop producing the report nobody reads.

The result can be strategic even when the work itself would make terrible television.

I have become suspicious of “best practice” without context

One reason recognition can be useful is that it exposes you to how other finance teams work.

But I do not believe every strong practice transfers intact.

A $30 million services company does not need the finance architecture of a multinational. A PE-backed company may need a different reporting rhythm from a founder-led business. A high-growth SaaS company has different working-capital mechanics from a distributor.

I want principles that travel and processes that fit.

That distinction has become more important to me over time.

The best finance people I know are skeptical of their own work

They reconcile the number they built.

They ask what assumption would make the answer wrong.

They notice when a model is becoming too complicated.

They do not confuse a polished deck with a strong analysis.

There is humility in good financial work because the future has a reliable habit of embarrassing certainty.

I trust the person who can say, “Here is what we believe, here is why, and here is what would change my mind.”

That is considerably more useful than pretending the forecast is a prophecy.

Recognition is nice. The standard afterward matters more.

A nomination can feel validating.

Then Monday arrives.

The model still has to work. The numbers still have to tie. The client still deserves an answer grounded in evidence.

I actually like that.

Finance does not let us live on applause very long.

There is always another period, another decision, another assumption that needs a skeptical look.

My definition of a finance superhero has changed

I would retire the cape.

I am looking for the person who makes the organization less dependent on heroics.

The person who builds a process somebody else can run. The person who makes bad news travel faster. The person who simplifies a model without making it simplistic. The person who notices the $2 million cash problem while everyone else is admiring EBITDA.

That is the finance work I respect.

Quiet, repeatable, explainable.

Usually with fewer tabs than the first version.

I still have affection for the spreadsheet life

Excel has been blamed, mocked and declared dead more times than I can count.

It remains open on finance screens everywhere because it is flexible, transparent and incredibly fast in capable hands.

It can also become a crime scene.

Both things are true.

I do not think the future of Finance is escaping spreadsheets entirely.

I think it is knowing what belongs in a spreadsheet, what belongs in a system, and where human judgment still belongs above both.

The award I would actually invent

If Finance needs another category, I would skip “Best Supporting Spreadsheet in a Drama.”

Tempting, though.

I would give an award for making a recurring finance process boring.

No midnight rescue. No mystery reconciliation. No final_final_v4.xlsx. No one person holding the entire workflow in their head.

Just a clean process that produces trustworthy information and leaves enough time for Finance to think.

That may not sound cinematic.

After enough years around month-end close, it sounds luxurious.

Finance recognition should include the work nobody sees

If I were designing the judging criteria, I would ask some odd questions.

Did the team reduce the number of manual reconciliations? Did forecast commentary become faster because the data got cleaner? Did business leaders start bringing Finance into decisions earlier? Did the close calendar become less dependent on one person?

Those changes do not photograph well.

They are often exactly what makes a finance organization better.

I am interested in outcomes that survive after the person who drove them leaves the room.

There is a difference between being indispensable and building something durable

Early in a career, being the person who knows everything can feel valuable.

You know the file. You know the workaround. You know why the number on tab 17 cannot be refreshed before tab 9.

People need you.

Eventually I started seeing the trap.

If a process cannot function without me, I may be important to the process—but I have not necessarily built a good process.

I would rather create systems, documentation and habits that let capable people operate without waiting for the keeper of the secret.

That is a different kind of value.

The CFO office is full of invisible translation

Accounting speaks in close, reconciliations and recognition. Sales speaks in pipeline, bookings and quotas. Operations speaks in capacity and throughput. Investors speak in growth, margin and cash.

Finance spends a lot of time translating among those languages.

A strong FP&A person can hear an operating change and understand where it will appear financially.

They can also take a financial consequence and explain it in terms the operating team can use.

That translation rarely appears in a job description as a deliverable.

It is one of the most valuable things the function does.

I have more respect for restraint than I used to

It is easy to add.

Another KPI. Another tab. Another scenario. Another page in the board pack.

Removing something requires judgment.

Is this report still useful? Does this model need this level of detail? Does management need twelve metrics or four? Is this process a control or merely a tradition?

The longer I work around Finance, the more I appreciate people who can simplify without losing the thing that matters.

Complexity often looks impressive right up until somebody has to maintain it.

Recognition can also create a useful pause

Finance runs on cycles.

Close. Forecast. Board. Budget. Repeat.

It is surprisingly easy to move from one deadline to the next without noticing how much a function has changed.

A nomination made me stop for a minute and look at the work differently.

Not as a collection of files and deliverables, but as a set of habits I had developed about how Finance should operate.

Question the assumption. Reconcile the source. Explain the change. Keep the model as simple as the decision allows. Make bad news safe enough to surface early.

Those habits matter more to me than any particular workbook.

I would rather be known for useful Finance than impressive Finance

Impressive Finance can produce a 60-page deck.

Useful Finance knows which five pages management needs.

Impressive Finance can build a model with extraordinary detail.

Useful Finance knows where detail changes a decision.

Impressive Finance can explain every variance after the month ends.

Useful Finance helps the business see the risk before the month ends.

The two can overlap, of course.

But when they do not, I know which one I choose.

The work gets better when Finance stops performing certainty

There is pressure in this profession to know.

What will revenue be? When will cash turn? What happens next quarter?

Sometimes the most professional answer is a range, a scenario or a clear statement of what we do not know yet.

I have become more comfortable with that.

Confidence should come from understanding the assumptions and the response, not from pretending uncertainty has been eliminated.

A forecast can be useful without being certain.

In fact, the useful ones usually know they are not.

So yes, the nomination meant something to me

Not because Finance needed an Oscars.

We are probably safer without one.

It meant something because this work can be quiet, repetitive and invisible when it is done well.

Recognition is a reminder that the craft matters.

Building trustworthy information matters. Helping leaders make better decisions matters. Designing a finance function that can operate without monthly heroics matters.

Then the moment passes and there is another forecast to review.

Which feels about right.

The standard I want to carry forward

If recognition does anything useful, I hope it raises the standard rather than freezes the formula.

I do not want to keep doing something because it once worked well enough to get noticed.

Finance changes. Tools change. Companies change. The questions leadership asks should change too.

The standard I want is simpler: does the work help someone understand the business and make a better decision?

If yes, keep improving it.

If no, the fact that we have always produced it is not much of a defense.

That is probably the least glamorous lesson available from an award nomination.

It is also the one I intend to keep.

That still feels worth celebrating.