Elevate your role from financial reporter to strategic partner by mastering scenario analysis, assumption testing, and the skills to drive business decisions.
Traditionally, controllers were viewed as guardians of accuracy and compliance. Modern controllers:
The strategic controller helps leadership decide what should happen, not just explain what already did. The controller often acts as an enterprise translator between strategy, operations, and financial outcomes. This sometimes can appear to be accuracy-focused and not necessarily provide decision-useful insight.
Controllers must move away from just variance explanation and include performance interpretation. To do this, the controller must understand business models and value drivers, be able to translate strategy into financial growth, and align KPIs with strategic priorities. Part of this process includes understanding the concepts of root-cause analysis vs. surface-level variance analysis. It also includes understanding correlation vs. causation in financial data.
Within this segment, we will review all of these concepts, and controllers will come away with insightful ideas regarding how to elevate their role.
Lynn Fountain has over 45 years of experience spanning public accounting, corporate accounting and consulting. 24 years of her experience has been working in the areas of internal and external auditing. She is a subject matter expert in multiple fields including internal audit, ethics, fraud evaluations, Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprise risk management, governance, financial management and compliance. Ms. Fountain has held two Chief Audit Executive positions for international companies. In 2011, as the Chief Audit Executive for an international construction/ engineering firm, she was involved in the active investigation of a joint venture fraud. The investigation included work with the FBI and ultimately led to indictment of the perpetrators and recovery of $13M. Ms. Fountain is currently engaged in her own training and consulting business and is a regular trainer for the AICPA. Ms. Fountain is the author of three separate technical books. “Raise the Red Flag – The Internal Auditors Guide to Fraud Evaluations” was published by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. -“Leading The Internal Audit Function” and -“Ethics and The Internal Auditor Political Dilemma” were published by Taylor & Francis In addition Ms. Fountain was a contributing author to the certification program exam for the National Association of Accountants. She also has certificate programs on various on-line platforms. Ms. Fountain has performed as an adjunct instructor for the School of Business for Grantham University and developed the first internal audit curriculum for the School of Business at the University of Kansas. Ms. Fountain obtained her BSBA from Pittsburg State University and her MBA from Washburn University in Kansas. She has her CGMA, CRMA credentials and CPA certificate (non-active).
