Running two parallel CFO searches on the same mandate is almost always a symptom, not a strategy. It signals that the board has not agreed what it is actually hiring for, and the cost of that disagreement is usually paid in wasted months and damaged candidate trust.
What follows is a real situation, anonymised. A £45m consumer brand, PE-backed, needed a new finance leader. The board ended up running two searches at the same time without fully admitting it. Here is how that happened and what it taught them.
What was the situation?
The business was a growing consumer brand with strong retail listings and a fast-moving direct-to-consumer channel. Revenue was around £45m, EBITDA margins were reasonable but under pressure from input costs, and the investor was two years into a five year hold.
The incumbent FD had done a solid job through an earlier growth phase but was not built for the next one. Everyone agreed a change was needed. That was the last thing everyone agreed on.
The founder-CEO wanted a commercial CFO who understood brand, could sit in front of retail buyers, and would protect the culture. The PE operating partner wanted a numbers-first CFO with a clean audit track record, tight cash discipline, and credibility for an eventual sale process.
Both were reasonable. They were also different roles.
Why did the board end up with two searches?
Rather than resolve the tension in the room, the board let it play out through process.
The CEO quietly engaged a contact of his to look for the commercial profile. The operating partner, in parallel, briefed a search firm on the transaction-ready profile. Neither told the other in plain terms. Each assumed their view of the role would win once good candidates appeared.
So two searches ran for roughly six weeks before anyone said it out loud.
The symptoms were obvious in hindsight. Candidates arrived with wildly different expectations of the job. Two strong people were interviewed for what were effectively two different mandates. Feedback in the board meeting made no sense because people were assessing against private, unstated criteria.
The moment it surfaced was when a candidate mentioned to the CEO that he had already been contacted about the same role by someone else. That is a bad way for a board to discover it has not aligned.
What did it cost?
The direct cost was duplicated effort and a longer timeline. The search that should have taken twelve weeks ran to twenty.
The harder cost was reputational. Two of the market's better candidates walked away. One said the business looked confused about what it wanted, which is a fair reading. Senior finance people talk to each other, and a messy process gets remembered.
The internal cost mattered too. The outgoing FD sensed the drift, morale in the finance team dipped, and month-end quality slipped during the gap. A finance function without a clear leader for five months is a real operational risk, not just an HR inconvenience.
What did the board do to fix it?
To their credit, they stopped and reset properly.
They ran a single facilitated session with the CEO, the chair, and the operating partner. The question on the table was simple. What is this CFO actually for over the next twenty-four months?
The honest answer was both things, but in sequence. The immediate need was financial control, cash rigour, and reporting the investor could trust. The commercial and brand instinct was important but secondary, and could be supported by a strong commercial finance director underneath.
Once they agreed the weighting, the profile became obvious. They wanted a controls-led CFO with genuine commercial curiosity, not a pure deal technician and not a brand evangelist.
They consolidated to one search, one scorecard, and one point of contact managing candidates. That is the basic discipline we bring to a mandate at Harper May, and it is the thing that was missing at the start.
The eventual hire came through cleanly in about seven weeks after the reset. She had the control background the investor wanted and enough consumer experience to earn the founder's trust.
What is the lesson for other boards?
Alignment is not a soft step you do before the real work. It is the work.
A CFO brief is a negotiation between the CEO's world and the investor's world. If those two people have not reconciled their view of the role in writing, no search firm can rescue it, and running two processes will not force clarity. It just spreads the confusion across more people.
Three practical rules came out of this case.
First, agree the sequence of priorities, not just the wish list. Most CFO roles cannot be everything at once, so decide what comes first.
Second, appoint one owner of the process. Multiple briefers create multiple briefs.
Third, write a single scorecard before you meet anyone. If you cannot agree the scorecard, you are not ready to interview.
Boards that get this right shorten their timelines and protect their reputation in a small market. If you want to see the kind of finance leaders these mandates attract, our current finance leadership roles give a sense of the field.
Common questions
Is it ever right to run two searches at once?
Rarely, and only if it is deliberate and disclosed. Some boards run a contingent and a retained process for genuine coverage, but everyone involved must know. Secret parallel searches driven by disagreement are a governance problem, not a sourcing tactic.
How do you resolve a CEO and investor who want different CFOs?
Force the sequencing conversation. Ask what the finance function must deliver in the next twelve to twenty-four months, then rank the priorities. Most disagreements dissolve once you separate what is essential now from what is desirable later.
How long should a mid-market CFO search take?
With a clear, agreed brief, roughly ten to fourteen weeks from launch to signed offer. Delays almost always trace back to a brief that was never truly settled at the start.
