How to Hire an Interim CFO in the UK: A Client’s Guide

1. Start with why you need one

Before you go anywhere near the market, get clear on why an Interim CFO is required. The usual triggers are:

• An unexpected CFO departure or leadership gap
• A turnaround or period of underperformance
• Private equity value creation
• Preparing the business for exit
• M&A, buy-and-build or integration
• Fundraising or refinancing
• Rapid growth that’s outgrown the finance function
• Finance transformation
• Cash, working capital or liquidity pressure
• Building or restructuring the finance function

One question cuts through most of this: are you hiring someone to maintain, improve, or transform? The answer shapes everything that follows: scope, seniority, and the type of person you actually need.

Two of these triggers get their own deep dive elsewhere on the Cedar blog: Why Are Private Equity Firms Turning to Interim CEOs for Exits? looks at exit preparation specifically, and Successful Finance Transformation Depends on Leadership Capability covers the finance transformation trigger in more depth.

2. Define the assignment, not the job title

An interim assignment should be defined by what needs to be delivered, not by a generic list of CFO responsibilities. Before you start the search, be clear on:

• Situation – what’s happening in the business, and why does it need an Interim CFO?
• Problem – what needs fixing, building, changing or delivering?
• Scope – what will they own, and where do the boundaries sit?
• Deliverables – what tangible outcomes are you expecting?
• Timescale – by when?

Compare these two briefs:

“Responsible for forecasting, cash flow and Board reporting.”

“Rebuild the forecasting process, introduce a reliable 13-week cash flow, improve Board reporting, and leave the business with a repeatable planning process within six months.”

The second gives candidates something to show up against, and gives you an objective way to judge whether the assignment actually worked.

3. Know which type of Interim CFO you need

“Interim CFO” isn’t one profile. It covers several, and picking the wrong one is one of the most common ways this goes wrong.

The career interim – has deliberately built a career around interim mandates. Comfortable walking into an unfamiliar business, diagnosing problems fast, and operating with Boards and investors from day one. Best suited to situations where speed and ambiguity are the key factors.

The repeat transformation CFO – their career keeps bringing them back into the same type of event: PE investment, turnarounds, exits, buy-and-build, refinancing. Some have held permanent roles too. Their value is having seen your exact situation before, more than once.

The recently permanent CFO – can bring excellent experience, but check the basics: do they genuinely want an interim assignment, are they comfortable with a finite mandate, are they also chasing permanent roles, and have they worked at interim pace before?

The step-up candidate – a Finance Director or Divisional CFO moving into their first CFO seat. Can work for lower-complexity assignments. Rarely the right call when you’re hiring an interim precisely because something urgent or difficult is happening.

The fractional CFO – supports several businesses at once, typically for a set number of days a month. Right for ongoing senior input without a full-time need. Wrong for a full-time transformation mandate.

4. Look for repetition, not just experience

The most useful question you can ask about any candidate is: how many times have they solved this exact problem before?

Need to prepare for exit? Find someone who has delivered exits. Need to integrate acquisitions? Find someone who has done it repeatedly. Need to fix cash? Find someone with a track record of measurable working-capital improvement.

Think of experience on a scale: exposure → participation → ownership → repeated delivery.

The further right, the lower your execution risk. This is also why strong interims can look “overqualified” on paper. Surplus experience is what lets them recognise the problem and move fast in your business.

5. Prioritise the mandate over the sector

Don’t let sector experience become an unnecessarily narrow filter.

A more useful hierarchy is: comparable mandate → scale and complexity → ownership → stakeholder environment → sector.

Sector knowledge matters more where regulation or technical complexity genuinely demands it. Otherwise, ask yourself: would you rather hire someone from your exact sector who’s never solved this problem, or someone adjacent who’s solved it four times?

Split your requirements into must-have, strong preference, and nice-to-have, and don’t let a “nice-to-have” knock out an otherwise strong candidate.

PE buyers are increasingly making this exact argument at exit too – see Transaction Experience vs Operational Leadership: What PE Firms Are Prioritising for a Successful Exit Strategy for how this plays out from the investor’s side.

6. Read an interim CV differently

Interim CVs don’t look like permanent ones, and that’s not an issue. Expect to see 6–12 month assignments, several businesses in a short window, gaps between roles, movement across sectors, and a mix of interim, consulting and permanent work.

For each assignment, dig into: why were they hired, what did they personally own, what did they deliver, how quickly, and what changed as a result? Repeated short tenures can simply mean: brought in, delivered, moved on.

7. Structure the engagement properly

Many experienced Interim CFOs operate through their own businesses and want assignments that can genuinely sit outside IR35. That takes more than a label; the contract terms and the actual working practices both need to support it.

This is another reason a clearly defined assignment scope matters: build the engagement around defined scope, specific deliverables, required outcomes and expected duration, rather than replicating the open-ended responsibilities of an employee. IR35 status should always be assessed on the engagement as a whole, with specialist advice where needed.

8. Set a realistic budget

Interim CFO rates move with business size and complexity, assignment scope, sector, location, IR35 status, scarcity of the right experience, and the level of Board or investor exposure involved. A straightforward leadership gap and a PE-backed pre-exit turnaround are both “Interim CFO” briefs but they will not command the same rate or the same candidate pool.

Don’t benchmark against permanent salary. Instead, weigh the rate against the financial value, or risk, attached to the problem you’re asking them to solve.

[Current UK Interim CFO day rate benchmarks by business size and complexity available from Cedar on request.]

9. Build the shortlist on evidence, not titles

A strong shortlist isn’t a list of people who’ve previously held the CFO title. For each candidate, establish:

• Comparable situation – have they genuinely operated in a similar environment?
• Personal ownership – what were they accountable for, specifically?
• Outcomes – what changed because they were there?
• Repetition – once, or repeatedly?
• Scale – was the previous situation genuinely comparable?
• Stakeholders – have they operated with a CEO, Board, PE sponsor, lenders or shareholders at this level before?

Compare every candidate against the assignment, not against each other’s CVs.

10. Interview for delivery

Interim interviews should lean hard on evidence:

• What’s the closest assignment you’ve completed to this one?
• What condition was the business in when you arrived?
• What were you personally hired to deliver?
• What did you change, and what was the measurable outcome?
• How quickly did you achieve it, and what did you leave behind?

Then test their thinking directly: “You join us on Monday. Based on what you know, where do you start?” A strong interim will move quickly from past experience to forming a hypothesis about your business specifically.

11. Reference for delivery, not personality

Ask previous CEOs, Chairs, investors or senior stakeholders: why were they hired, what were they expected to deliver, what did they personally own, what changed, did they deliver on time, and how did they handle senior stakeholders? Then ask the question that tends to matter most: would you hire them again for the same situation?

12. Give them the authority to match the accountability

Before your Interim CFO starts, be clear on: the executive sponsor and reporting line, decision-making authority, access to the CEO and Board, the relationship with investors or shareholders, team responsibility, access to information, and the ability to actually change processes and structures.

An interim hired to deliver change but given no authority to make it happen is set up to fail before day one.

Common hiring mistakes to avoid

• Failing to define the assignment – be specific about the problem, scope and expected outcome.
• Hiring someone who’s growing into the role – workable in lower-risk situations, risky when urgency and complexity are the reason you’re hiring an interim at all.
• Mistaking exposure for delivery – being CFO while an exit happened is not the same as leading one.
• Rejecting career interims for a “fragmented” CV – a string of completed assignments can be exactly the experience you need.
• Overweighting sector experience – prioritise someone who’s solved the same problem over someone who’s simply worked in the same industry.
• Hiring the biggest CV – a £2bn listed company CFO isn’t automatically right for a £100m entrepreneurial business.
• Choosing on rate alone – weigh the cost of the assignment against the cost of delay or failure.
• Giving responsibility without authority – if they’re accountable for change, they need the authority to deliver it.

Interim CFO hiring checklist

Before you go to market, you should be able to answer:

• Why do we need an Interim CFO?
• What problem are they being hired to solve?
• What are the defined deliverables, and what does success look like?
• What will they own, and what authority will they have?
• How long is the expected assignment?
• What comparable experience is genuinely non-negotiable?
• What engagement structure are we proposing, and has IR35 been properly considered?
• What’s our realistic budget?
• Who makes the hiring decision, and how quickly can we move?

The goal isn’t to find someone who could eventually grow into the right CFO. It’s to find someone who has already solved the problem you have.

The bottom line

Every point in this guide comes back to the same idea we opened with: an Interim CFO search only works when you stop treating it like a permanent one. The businesses that get this right aren’t the ones with the biggest budget or the longest shortlist. They’re the ones who can say, in one sentence, exactly what they need this person to deliver and by when and then hire against that, not against a job title.

Get that right, and the rest of this guide takes care of itself. The scope tells you which type of interim you need. The type tells you what to look for on a CV. The evidence (not the title, not the polish, not the biggest name in the room) tells you who’s actually going to deliver.

That’s the entire difference between an interim appointment that quietly fixes the problem and one you’re still talking about, for the wrong reasons, twelve months later.

Our Interim practice works with businesses across Accountancy & Finance, Tax, Treasury, and Private Equity to find interim leaders who’ve solved the problem before, not just held the title. If you’re scoping an assignment, get in touch with me directly at [email protected], and I’d be happy to continue the conversation.