"This is below me" ego in finance profession
"This is below me." In senior finance circles, this sentiment is often the unspoken justification for unnecessary headcount. I recently consulted for an NGO where a two-person finance team insisted on hiring a third FTE for bookkeeping. The workload was negligible, but the psychological barrier was high: they felt the ledger was beneath their pay grade. Because the finance function holds the monopoly on financial data, these teams can easily justify "empire building" to the Board. But let’s call it what it is: a direct contradiction of the owner’s mandate to maximize wealth and preserve cash. In the age of AI and automated reconciliation, a £30,000 salary for manual data entry isn't a "requirement"—it’s a symptom of operational stagnation. The finance profession is meant to be a guardian of capital, not a source of sabotage. If you are a senior leader facing "undignified" bottlenecks because you refuse to touch the books, yet you are unwilling to leverage cost-efficient AI alternatives, you are the bottleneck. Are you ready to trade the "this is below me" ego for a high-efficiency AI alternative? Give an "Agree" in the comments.