What are the behaviour traits of a person with high level of integrity?

Honesty
Above all, a person with a high level of integrity is someone with an inner commitment to be honest. The truth – be this negative or positive – must be communicated precisely and without deception.

Taking Responsibility
An honest person will always make mistakes. But how an individual responds to having made a mistake allows their level or integrity to be measured. A person with high levels of integrity will not cover them up, but communicate and learn from them.

Being Consistent
Integrity is difficult to deliver when doing what is right is expensive or inconvenient.  A person with high levels of integrity will demonstrate it consistently, and above all in times of crisis.

How Integrity shapes me

Doing the right thing defines me as a person. We have all found ourselves in a position where it would have been easier to turn a blind eye, or hide something under the rug. I am no exception.

But my upbringing taught me the benefits of always acting with integrity – the most important of which is that living without lies and deception is just much easier!

Integrity is something that I practise both personally and professionally.

In the Accounting and Finance world I have encountered many scenarios in which many would have sleepless nights. Balance Sheets with high levels of material misstatements, P&Ls which deceive stakeholders about profitability, and customer facing process failures which could harm long term success.

Building finance processes and internal control systems is my core competency to reducing the risk of these types of issues to levels acceptable to the Executive Team. Having trust in the numbers not only helps me to sleep well at night, but also provide accurate and timely information for appropriate decision making.

Finally, doing the right thing is not enough. Being seen to be doing the right thing, and also doing the right thing when nobody is watching is critical to practising the value of integrity. And doing the right thing in time of stress and chaos (staying consistent) is what differentiates the strong from the weak.

Practical ways of ensuring confidentiality is maintained:

Confidentiality Agreements

Upon signing of our contract, you will have my personal written commitment to maintaining confidentiality. Topics will not be discussed with unauthorised personnel within the business, and information not already in the public domain will not be shared with 3rd parties.

Acting on your behalf with 3rd parties will only be undertaken within the strictest of guidelines and prior unequivocal consent.

Security of data
My preference is to work with a company provided laptop following all company policies in relation to safeguarding of data. In cases whereby both parties agree that use of my personal equipment is more practical, we will agree on an acceptable protocol.

Hard copies of company documents will not be removed from company premises, and if working remotely they will only be held on private premises (either my home or rented premises).

Avoiding Gossip
Entering into gossip will not be undertaken, nor will sharing private discussions with others be shared. Unsubstantiated information will never be accepted as the truth without strong evidence to support it.

How Confidentiality shapes me:

Acting with confidentiality is not something that I was born with, but like many it was something that I was introduced with as a young child when one of my grandparents said to me “don´t tell your mum or dad that I gave you this money”!

My most profound introduction to the importance of maintaining confidentiality was in my working life…starting with a mistake… and finishing with self-reflection.

By nature, I am a person that likes to share information. Why keep something to yourself when it can also benefit someone else? Why not share that you´ve found a better way of performing a process with your work colleagues so they can also consider doing the same? Why not share a small concern with someone more knowledgeable just in case it might prevent a future mishap? Why not share a dumb idea just in case someone else might develop it into a larger brainwave?

So, the mistake? At the start of my career before I had started to study Accounting & Finance, I worked in the finance department of a credit card company. I was investigating a financial discrepancy of large value and upon investigating found myself looking at the credit card account of a well-known public figure. “Look here!” I said to a colleague to show them who´s account I was looking at, without thinking twice at what I had just done, not even recognising that I had made an error.

It is easy to try and convince myself in hindsight that that my colleague equally had the permissions to investigate the discrepancy. However, upon starting my professional studies and learning about the importance and potential unintended consequences of failures of confidentiality, I was self-aware enough to realise that I was able to resolve the discrepancy with my colleague´s help, should have erred heavily on the side of caution and not shared this information.

There is a line between sharing information and sharing confidential information. It may be a grey one at times, but the line definitely exists. I am now a person that does not enter into gossip. If it is not important to me, I don´t want to know about it. I am now a person that treats most one-to-one conversations as confidential even if not clearly expressed.

However, there is one scenario where I will not maintain confidentiality….in cases where actions are potentially unlawful.

I have worked in a scenario where I had serious concerns about reporting that were being made to a stock exchange. I first reported informally with my line manager, then informally with the CFO. When I was not satisfied that my concerns had been address sufficiently seriously, and later when I still believe there was an issue, I raised this officially with the CFO. It was unfortunate that the escalation had to gothis  far, but in order to stay consistent with my working ethics had to raise these concerns with the Audit Committee.

What are the behaviour traits of a person with high levels excellence?

Proactivity
Proactivity for the CFO performing with high levels of excellence means providing relevant and targeted data to operations managers and helping them to understand the financial impacts of the decisions they make.

No longer should operations managers take decisions without understanding the financial impacts, and the CFO should proactively support them to maximise the results and minimise risks.

Communication & Leadership Skills
Gone are the days when a CFO could prepare standard monthly reporting to the Board of Directors and expect his or her job to be accomplished.

A modern CFO must be communicating more effectively. They must be able to bring the numbers to life and be able to explain numbers in way that the business can understand what is going on.

They should present clear goals and objectives and define how success or failure will be measured through use of KPI´s.

Above all, the CFO must be clear in their speech at all times.

Going beyond just the numbers
Past too are the days when a CFO could make decisions “just by looking at the numbers”.

What used to be a standard review of periodical financials to highlight concerns of the backward-looking financial performance of the businesses is no longer cutting-edge.

A CFO must now understand the operational activities of a business to understand root causes, identify more specific areas which need be addressed, and turn the financials into a storybook which allows non-financial employees to manage with a “financial head”.

The modern CFO must also play his or her part in the operational running of the business and make recommendations from a position of knowledge and ensure that his or her team is performing at the highest level by having strong individuals and ensuring they have the tools to allow them perform their roles.

Forward thinking
It´s a well-known adage that you cannot change the past.

CFO´s and their teams have historically focused their analysis on past performance to provide a simple narrative to explain why the financial performance was such. But whilst historical analysis may provide some genuine insight into areas that should be addressed, a CFO that continues to put his or her focus on the past will never be able to change the future.

The modern CFO must be alive to existing risks and opportunities and work in the current day focusing on how performance can be maximised in the future.

Being the bearer of truth
As the individual within the business with the highest level of understanding of financial performance, this CFO must take full responsibility for ensuring that this knowledge is shared with relevant stakeholders.

Being fully honest ensures that the relationship between and CFO and his or her CEO is based on complete trust of the numbers, and that the CFO can be a valued sparring partner.

The CEO must ensure that all upsides, downsides and unknowns are presented when performing options analysis to give confidence around expected results of decision making.

How Excellence shapes me

I have never been just a numbers guy.

In fact looking at a spreadsheet can be both boring and soul destroying. Unless they transmit a story, or otherwise tell you something that you didn’t know before, there´s just no point in looking at one.

In my first role at General Electric, I was responsible for performing a number of Balance Sheet Reconciliations. Every day I would print off the same reports, updated only to reflect the remediation work that I had performed the day before, and updated with new issues of the day that needed to be investigated. It is fair to say that without anything additional to stimulate my mind it would have driven me crazy.

So, what gave me additional stimulation?

This came from trying to understand what was behind the numbers. Every number on my report was as a result of a process that had gone wrong, a customer account that was incorrectly stated. It was my personal mission to understand the story behind these. What was it that caused these errors to occur?

So I took it upon myself to become qualified in 6-sigma and perform analysis on the root causes for these issues, and putting process improvements in place to prevent these errors from being repeated in the future. Although this resulted in less work for me, it also improved the customer experience and reduced complaints.

This level of curiosity has stayed with me throughout both my professional and personal life.

More recently, my excellence is focused on ensuring that both operational and financial processes are efficient, and result in accurate monthly financial reporting.

Closing of the books on a monthly in no longer than 3 days allows the finance function more time to support the business rather that just number crunching.

What are the behaviour traits of a person with high level of Passion?

Energetic
A person who oozes energy is not likely to be a person to working a 9-6 day leaving religiously “on-time”, but someone who loves their job and views it as an integral part of their life. They are the opposite of someone who hates their job.

With high and rewarding responsibilities, an energetic person will use all of their available resources to be positive, carrying his/her team with them.

Self-Driven
A self-driven person does not need to seek motivation from others – they will just simply make a start even if the whole pathway is not necessarily well defined in front of them.

They will be selective in accepting challenges and prioritise their resources on those which offer greatest reward and satisfaction.

They are more likely to be very goal orientated.

Resilient
Resilience is the determination and perseverance required to recover quickly from setbacks and keep moving forward towards achieving their goal.

A resilient person has high levels of emotional intelligence to control their reactions to emotion and keep calm under stress.

Authenticity
An authentic person will act out in ways that are true to their own personal values. They are generous to others, respectful of the views of others, be free from finding excuses for failure, and learn from mistakes.

How I demonstrate passion in my life

In my teens I was clear that I didn´t want to go college or further university. I had not chosen my career and it was clear to me that going would have been a waste of energy.

However, once I had decided what I wanted to do, I immediately found a junior role and studied full days on Saturday for 3 years to obtain my accounting and finance professional qualifications.

The studying of exams in the final year wasn´t easy – I fell into the trap of immaturity and assumed that because I´d passed early exams with flying colours that the finals would be the same. Knocked know, wondering if I´d reached the limit of my capabilities, I got up and got going again working harder and learning along the way.

In my working career I have never stayed 100% within the boundaries of my role In my early days I was also curious to see how my work affected others, or what others did with the reports I produced in order to bring some additional value either by process improvement or doing more for colleagues more senior than me.

Later I have always proactively set my own goals, managing my seniors instead of them managing me, and always moved forward to achieve them even if detailed plans have had to change.

Experiences through life will always change you as a person – and for the better. However, I have always remained authentic to all of my core values.