CEOs say CFOs are the greatest threat to their jobs

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If you’ve noticed your CEO looking over their shoulder lately, you might be the reason why.

CEOs view CFOs as the biggest threat to their jobs, a new survey by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found. More than a quarter of the 500 CEOs in the survey (26%), dubbed “The CEO Insomnia Index,” chose CFOs as the C-suite execs most likely to compromise their job security.

CFOs get a lot of face time with board members, which “can earn them both credibility and influence,” BCG wrote in a report on the survey. “Over time that could position them as the natural heir apparent to the CEO.”

CEOs also view COOs (24% chose them) and chief commercial officers (20%) as potential job threats.

But C-suiters might want to watch their backs: Anywhere from 52%–65% of the CEOs surveyed said they planned to make changes to senior leadership in the next six months. (The percentages varied by tenure, with newer CEOs more likely to predict changes. The survey polled CEOs at companies with revenues ranging from $100 million to above $5 billion.)

Lonely at the top: CEOs are also feeling the strain. On average, they ranked their stress levels over the last quarter at 66.7 out of 100, which the BCG described as “above the clinical threshold typically used to indicate high stress.”

In write-in comments, some CEOs described their role as isolating. “I am lonely between leadership and Board,” one said. Others stated that they were expected to be all things to all people: “Everyone expects the CEO to fix everything as it relates to them,” one wrote, describing the CEO as “an emotional shock absorber.”

CEOs ranked “meeting growth targets” as the mandate they foresaw causing them the most stress in the upcoming six months (with an average “stress score” of 73.8 out of 100), followed by managing costs (64) and meeting board expectations (62.1).

Under pressure: The pressures on CEOs have intensified in the past six months, BCG wrote, especially in relation to their interactions with boards. Board members have had to learn about such issues as AI, tariffs, and geopolitics, BCG managing director Judith Wallenstein, head of the firm’s CEO advisory practice, said in the report. Thus, they’re able to ask questions of CEOs that “are far more granular and informed than even six months ago,” she said. One-third of CEOs surveyed said they had more to prove to their boards now than they did six months ago.

That said, CEOs generally get along well with their boards. Almost nine in 10 (89%) described their relationship with their board as “strong,” and nearly all of them (94%) said they were “fully” or “generally” aligned with their board.