What Can You Learn from Julian O’Neill’s Journey from IT Director to CFO?

Julian O’Neill’s unconventional route to CFO — via IT leadership and a brief stint as CEO — offers a powerful reminder that finance careers aren’t always linear. In this episode of The GrowCFO Show, Julian shares the pivotal decisions, career shifts, and lessons that shaped his path to CFO at Ardent Hire Solutions. His story shows how commercial experience outside of finance can set you apart and prepare you for executive leadership.

It's a very small world. As guest Julian O'Neill and host, Kevin Appleby discovered in the first few minutes of the episode. 20 years ago they both worked for PwC Consulting and were on the same client project in the Ministry of Defence. Before that, they were both accountants in manufacturing businesses. But since that brief spell working together their careers have been very different. Julian has operated at the board level for a number of big-name brands before taking up the role of CFO at a high growth start-up.

Julian qualified as an accountant in industry. He then briefly worked as a management consultant. Next, his journey took him to IT Director and a number of CFO roles in divisions of large corporations. Julian joined Arcadia Group and ended up doing a commercial role. He stepped away from big brands and joined a startup as CFO, taking over as CEO when the original founder was forced to step down. After the sale of that business, he took on his current CFO role, preferring that to another challenge as CEO.

Julian O'Neill reflects on his experience, sharing lessons he learned at each stage of his career. He adds that his time outside finance, in commercial roles has been invaluable.

Listen to the full episode and hear Julian's full, and extremely fascinating, story.

Links

Julian O'Neill on LinkedIn

Kevin Appleby on LinkedIn

Find out more about becoming a CFO

The CFO as co-pilot to the CEO

Timestamps

01:48 Accountancy and finance open a lot of doors

03:40 Early career in telecoms; qualifying as an accountant in Cable & Wireless

06:18 Spicing things up at General Motors

11:30 Doing an MBA at Warwick Business School

12:10 First role outside finance at Siemens

13:25 Joining PwC Consulting

15:42 The decision to leave the big 4

17:00 Pizza Hut

17:30 First director role

18:20 The challenge of being an IT director

26:25 Arcadia, as a divisional CFO

30:50 CFO of an airline

32:20 Moving from a big brand to CFO at a £2m turnover high growth business

34:50 Taking over from the CEO

37:30 Finding a new job while selling the business

38:28 Back to a CFO role in a small business

39:00 Small startup vs big corporate

40:54 The importance of getting experience in commercial roles outside the finance function