Despite the abundance of resources aimed at helping finance professionals sharpen their technical skills, it’s soft skills that are most prized by finance leaders right now.
That’s what we learned from Vena’s State of Strategic Finance 2025 report. An “operational understanding of our industry” was the skill finance leaders considered most important for their teams to have, cited by 33% of respondents. Business partnering was also in the top three highest-prioritized skills, cited by 18% of respondents.
Interestingly, while business acumen is a top priority for finance leaders when assembling their teams, it’s an area where a skills gap appears to exist.
20% of finance leaders identified it as the biggest development area for their team at present, tied with AI and machine learning skills, and behind only data analysis skills (28%).
With business units turning to departments like FP&A for advice more frequently amid growing market uncertainty, it’s in your best interest to step outside of the Finance bubble to understand what the numbers mean in an operational sense.
From an FP&A lens, business acumen is the ability to understand what drives the business and how that translates to financial outcomes, most simply, on the income statement.
When finance teams understand what operational activities drive the inputs of the P&L, they begin to see how daily decisions directly affect financial performance and the business’s ability to generate value.
Take advertising spend as an example: reducing it may improve short-term margins, but if fewer potential customers hear about your product, revenue will decline. That operational change has a clear, measurable financial consequence.
This is where key performance indicators (KPIs) come in. KPIs are how we track these operational levers. They let us assess business health in real time. When we connect KPIs with financial metrics to tell a coherent story, highlighting the risks and opportunities embedded in each decision, we start to see the business not just in numbers, but in motion.
According to Harvard Business School, “strengthening the business acumen of leaders across the organization reduces the risk of false assumptions and uninformed decisions. A strong, shared understanding of business strategy, the market, and financial basics will serve every management team.”
Forming connections between what’s on the income statement and what departmental levers are driving those numbers is not something accountants are necessarily trained to do in school, however.
Having business acumen as an FP&A professional means going into conversations with stakeholders knowing what the other party cares most about and factoring this into your delivery of the information.
And when you break this skill down, it's essentially three parts: systems thinking, relational intelligence, and curiosity.
Systems thinking is the practice of seeing the whole, not just the parts, and understanding how a tweak in one area (say, customer onboarding, for instance) can ripple into another (like churn).
For FP&A teams, systems thinking deepens business acumen by moving you from reporting the “what” to explaining the “why” and anticipating “what's next.” You start connecting operational decisions to financial outcomes and recognizing how small shifts can cascade across the business.
That’s the essence of business acumen: understanding how everything fits together.
Another crucial aspect of business acumen is relational intelligence: the ability to understand and manage dynamics between people within the context of their relationships.
Think of it like being an interpreter in a room where everyone speaks a different language and has a different agenda. You’re not just translating words, you’re decoding intent, emotion, and stakes.
This is critical for us in Finance, as we sit at the crossroads of many competing priorities across the business. We balance stakeholder goals, navigate tough conversations, and translate financial insights into narratives that will resonate across various functions.
The better you are at this, the more likely everyone walks away aligned, even if they didn’t start on the same page.
Finally, arguably the biggest determining factor in whether you can build your business acumen as an FP&A professional is your inclination to ask “why.”
It’s also how you’ll build trust and influence as a business partner—with curiosity, low ego, and consistent practice.
One simple way to build this muscle, at any level, is to join a cross-functional meeting just to observe, listen and absorb. Learn how others think and what matters to them.
As Thomas Krolak, Sr. Director of FP&A at Vena, put it: “Don’t just stay in your bubble or silo. Go and try to understand every other part of the business as well.”
By approaching stakeholders with genuine interest paired with intentionality and a desire to understand how their function operates, you earn the credibility to influence outcomes and drive impact where it matters most.
It’s tough to go into conversations with functional leaders feeling like you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been fortunate to work with leaders who are great at explaining key concepts and providing operational context, but not everybody gets the luxury of executives’ time.
That’s why it can be so helpful to turn to AI to build your knowledge of how different business functions work, and even use it as a thought partner.
Today, AI compresses the business learning curve. As finance professionals, we’re not always trained in the inner workings of every business unit we support. But now, instead of pausing mid-meeting to ask what a term means or how a process works, we can turn to large language models, asking “why” five times if needed, until the implications are clear. No judgment, just clarity.
This empowers us to show up more informed, ask the right questions—and even challenge assumptions. When we understand operational context, we can dive deeper into issues to understand the real root cause and arrive at solutions that are ultimately best for the business.
Being an effective business partner means not just being a “yes person,” but having the courage to propose another way.
But while AI makes it easier to learn the mechanics of the business, there isn’t a shortcut to becoming a trusted partner. It takes time to earn your seat at the table. You need to:
Work in collaboration with your business partners when doing analysis on their behalf
Show up to cross-functional meetings prepared and ready to engage
Ask the right questions—which won’t always be the easiest
Focusing on establishing trust early on when engaging in business partnering is what will help you navigate those challenging conversations about efficiency and spend. While the Finance team has the role of being stewards of the business, we also want other departments to know we’re on their side.
Striking that balance and having the tools to ask sharper, more strategic questions is what turns the FP&A function into a thought partner to the entire business—not just a number cruncher.
Dig into the full findings from our State of Strategic Finance 2025 report to hear from over 200 finance leaders about what’s driving their strategic planning.