What’s really waiting for you next year?

2026 won’t be defined by external shocks; it will be defined by the internal fragilities CFOs already live with.

Every December we all do the same thing – scan the horizon, make a few predictions, present a tidy slide deck about “the year ahead.”

In 2026 it is my guess, however, that the real issues CFOs will face in the coming year aren’t going to come from the horizon.

They’re going to come from inside the organisation: the brittle processes, the unexamined data flows, the “temporary” fixes that somehow became permanent and the operational shortcuts nobody has looked at since before COVID.

AI-Enabled Errors Scaling Faster Than Controls Can Catch Them

AI is now embedded everywhere in finance operations – reconciliations, close processes, payroll, forecasting, procurement analytics.

The operational risk isn’t the well-publicised “AI hallucinating.”  It’s AI accelerating bad data, bad logic and bad assumptions before any human notices.

In 2026, your biggest operational failure may start as a small unnoticed model misconfiguration that scales across the whole process in an hour.

If you don’t upgrade your data quality assessments, AI model validation checks, exception handling, and human override protocols, you are essentially driving a high-speed train without brakes.

Payroll Compliance as the New Operational Landmine

Whether you pay your employees correctly is no longer a rare governance issue – it’s a pure and likely operational risk.

Enterprise agreements layered over award interpretations layered over changing rosters layered over manual adjustments is a perfect environment for systemic pay errors.

In 2026, the operational question is:

Do you know what your payroll engine is doing?

Most organisations don’t.

The real risk is discovering a 5–10 year error pattern that requires remediation, backpay, system rebuilds, media response and regulator involvement – all at once.

The Fragility of “Shadow Systems” in Finance Operations

Every finance function has them: spreadsheets, databases, homegrown macros, workarounds living in someone’s OneDrive.

In a steady-state world, they survive. In a volatile world, they cause outages.

In 2026, a retirement, resignation, or version upgrade can break an invisible but critical workflow.

As these systems aren’t documented, mapped or monitored the failure looks like a surprise – but it was predictable.

Vendor Dependencies and Third-Party Failures

Finance operations quietly rely on dozens of SaaS vendors, service providers, outsourced teams, and cloud platforms. Most CFOs don’t realise how many critical processes are now externally owned.

The operational risk is straightforward:  If one key vendor fails, is breached or changes pricing/models suddenly, can you still operate?

2026 will punish organisations with poor understanding of their vendors and no meaningful right to audit; exit or fallback plans.

Data Quality Erosion Across Core Systems

ERP migrations, rushed integrations, M&A activity, and years of “we’ll fix that later” have left many finance teams with degraded master data.

In the AI era, bad data isn’t a nuisance – it’s an operational accelerator of mistakes.

Your operational risk in 2026 is not data inaccuracy.

It’s data unreliability – where nobody is 100% sure which system is the source of truth.

That causes rework, reconciliation failures, incorrect reporting, model errors, delayed close cycles and eventually reputational damage when numbers don’t reconcile externally.

Breakdowns in End-to-End Control Flow

Most operational failures are not caused by one thing breaking — they’re caused by gaps between things.

The handoff from HR to Payroll. The movement from Procurement to AP.  The data flow from Operations to Finance.

The exception that falls between two teams’ responsibilities.

2026 will expose every weak interface because automation accelerates speed but doesn’t automatically accelerate coordination.

CFOs who don’t invest in mapping the actual end-to-end processes – not the PowerPoint versions – will face outage after outage.

Slow Incident Response in an Era That Requires Fast Recovery

When systems go down, when data is corrupted, when payroll miscalculates, when receivables freeze – the question in 2026 won’t be “How did it happen?”

It will be: “How fast can you recover?”

Most finance teams still operate with response plans written for a slower world: manual escalations, unclear roles, no automated alerts, no rehearsed scenarios.

Recovery speed is now a financial capability – not an IT one.

2026 won’t be defined by new surprises from the outside world – it will be shaped by the operational weaknesses already sitting inside most organisations.

The real risks for CFOs aren’t exotic.

The hardest part is admitting how fragile some of these foundations really are.

Being honest about your weak spots isn’t an admission of failure; it’s the only way to avoid being blindsided.

The organisations that get through 2026 cleanly will be those that confront their operational realities early.

You can start by mapping the real end-to-end processes rather than relying on the polished versions that appear in presentations.

You should run a genuine data reliability assessment, tracing issues back to their source and fixing the causes not the symptoms.

Payroll configuration needs a line-by-line review so you understand exactly what the engine is doing.

It’s essential to catalogue your critical vendors, stress-test their reliability and understand your exit options well in advance.

And finally, rehearse operational failure scenarios so your teams learn to recover quickly and confidently.

Done consistently, these steps create not just resilience but momentum – the kind of operational strength that lets a CFO shape the year ahead rather than brace for it.