Broader expectations of the role of the finance chief are leading to some unconventional CFOs—executives with deep experience outside the traditional finance, comptroller, and accounting career paths. This is especially so the more companies rely on the CFO to shape, refine, and implement their strategic plans. The best candidate for the role, as some of our colleagues have noted, reflects a balance among the demands of a company’s strategy, the skills and abilities of the CEO and other senior managers, and the given individual’s ability to drive change.1

So perhaps the logic was obvious three years ago, when ADP tapped its chief of strategy, Jan Siegmund, to step into the CFO role. A 15-year veteran of the data-processing company, which boasts $12 billion in annual revenues, Siegmund describes his chief-strategy-officer (CSO) tenure as marked by a series of changes that transformed ADP from a primarily national payroll-centric company to a global human-capital-management company. That experience has proved helpful for Siegmund as CFO, especially in his ongoing efforts to transform ADP’s finance function.

We recently sat down with Siegmund in ADP’s Roseland, New Jersey, headquarters to discuss his role as CFO, ADP’s finance transformation, and the impact of technological innovation on the industry.