Finance, audit and legal recruitment.

“How do I test someone on files I know?”

By starting from a real case in your team rather than a list of systems. A discrepancy, a delay or a badly framed contract says more than a CV.

For a close, talk about entities, deadlines and the reconciliations still open. For reporting, about the indicators business managers actually use. For contracts, about service commitments, liability clauses and approval paths. Then ask how the person would go about it, whom they would go and see, and what they would check first.

A gap between sales data and margin reporting opens a good conversation with a business controller. A missing purchase approval opens another with an internal control manager. Ask what the person produced themselves, what they coordinated and who approved their work: that is what gives meaning to the years of experience.

“How much of the numbers and contracts do I open up?”

By scope, and by writing down what stays closed. Access to the ERP, to bank data and to employment files is not handled like an office account.

Decide the scope before day one: entities, cycles, bank accounts, payroll and employment files, contracts under negotiation. Support on a close does not need the same rights as an internal auditor, and an employment lawyer does not need the same as business controlling.

Segregation of duties still applies: who enters, who approves, who pays. Someone holding two of those roles creates a risk your internal control no longer covers. Plan for confidentiality on live matters, non-public transactions, and the removal of access at the end of the assignment.

“What if a close falls during the assignment?”

It will, and it does not move. Set the start and the handover against the accounting calendar rather than against an assignment length.

The deadlines in this function do not negotiate: monthly, quarterly and annual closes, statutory accounts, consolidation, audit review, tax and payroll deadlines. Someone arriving three days before a close spends their first week watching, and a handover planned in the middle of one will not happen.

Say which deadlines fall in the period, which ones the person will carry and which stay with the team. For a system migration or an ERP change, say what is being carried over, what is checked twice and who decides when figures disagree.

That calendar is also what tells you whether the need is temporary support or a lasting appointment.

“What will they be able to decide alone?”

To be written before the arrival, with the thresholds. Sales, accounting and business controlling do not hold the same information, and the professional needs to know whom to ask for what.

Sales explains volumes and prices, accounting provides entries and reconciliations, business controlling analyses performance. Someone taking over a scope needs to know who holds what, and who approves what. In internal audit, control and risk, process owners explain their practices and discuss findings; the actions agreed then have an owner and a date.

For legal and compliance, say who talks to whom: counsel, operational teams, leadership, outside advisers. Set out the delegation thresholds, the commitments that travel up and those that are signed at the level of the role.

Keep the files, the assumptions and the open questions available to the team continuing the work. If the need is to lead the whole function, the answer is no longer support but an interim finance director.