Is your career moving with intention or just momentum? Whether you’re stepping into your second role or navigating senior leadership, taking time to reflect on your direction can reshape your long-term trajectory. From those targeting CFO roles to CPAs pursuing deep specialization, a well-defined but flexible plan helps you evaluate opportunities more clearly and make choices that align with your professional goals. The most successful professionals don’t just react to what’s next; they prepare for it.
Here’s how to approach career planning with clarity and purpose.
Define Your Ultimate Goal
Are you working toward becoming a CFO or aiming to become a go-to expert in a specialized area like FP&A, Controllership, or Technical Accounting? Each path requires a different mix of experiences. Broader roles demand exposure across multiple functions and a growing level of strategic involvement. Specialized roles require depth of knowledge and subject matter expertise. Either way, defining direction, even if it evolves over time, keeps your next move aligned with where you ultimately want to land.
Identify the Experience You’ll Need
Once you’ve identified your ultimate destination, reverse-engineer the skills and exposure required to reach that goal. Leadership positions often require experience in several key finance areas: reporting, systems, planning & analysis, operations finance, and more. Building this breadth early is essential. For function-specific growth, prioritize depth, roles that challenge you to lead within your niche while broadening your perspective and visibility, while becoming an expert in that space.
Every step should be intentional, with each role expanding the skills, exposure, and leadership capabilities you’ll need for what’s ahead.
Track What You’ve Done, and What’s Missing
Career progress is easiest to manage when you treat it like a working plan. Maintain a simple professional development document or spreadsheet where you list out the finance functions, responsibilities, and projects you’ve been part of, whether it’s budgeting, ERP implementation, acquisition integration, writing technical memos, drafting MD&A, or leading teams.
Update it regularly and use it to identify skill gaps relative to where you want to go. Are you building toward the right leadership profile? Have you worked across enough functions or environments? Are you gaining visibility with decision-makers? The clearer your inventory of experience, the easier it is to guide your next step.
Stay Flexible, But Be Intentional
Career planning doesn’t require rigid timelines or fixed outcomes. Priorities evolve, preferences shift, and new opportunities emerge. But without a framework, it’s easy to get stuck or settle into roles that don’t help you grow.
When you have a plan, even a loose one, you’re better equipped to evaluate new roles based on how well they support your trajectory. Not every opportunity will be right, and turning down the wrong one can be just as valuable as saying yes to the right one.
Not Sure What Comes Next in Your Career?
At CAC, we help CPAs at every stage, from building early career experience to advancing into senior leadership. Whether you’re exploring new challenges, deepening your expertise, or preparing for your next big move, we’ll help you find roles that align with your goals and move forward with confidence.
Explore current CPA opportunities or connect with our consultants today.
