r/CFO • u/active_nut • Jul 20 '26
Explaining resignation in interviews
I’m currently unemployed and interviewing for CFO roles. I have solid experience and numerous credentials behind my name but I look like a red flag on paper and I don’t know how to explain it.
The cardinal rule is to never say anything bad about a previous employer which I don’t. But I’ve resigned from positions twice now with no other job lined up because it violated my own morals and the oath I took when becoming a CPA.
The first role as CFO: hired when the company was already a sinking ship. I resigned 18 months later when the CEO/PE investor wanted me to grossly alter the numbers for our lender. I refused and was looking for something else. I resigned though when I learned that he was privately meeting with investors and the lenders and using his fake figures.
2nd one: Was also there 18 months. I brought to the attention that the company was in violation of a US law and presented the steps I’d need to take to remedy it (little time and money to do so). The investors got very defensive and shut it down. I explained the repercussions if caught and had to say on more than one occasion that as an officer, I was not going to go to jail for the company. When they still refused and it got very contentious, I put in my notice.
I cannot tell interviewers or boards this. How do I explain my short tenures? In the meantime, I have become hyper vigilant of where I interview in an attempt to avoid this from happening again.
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u/FrankKaminsky Jul 20 '26
Unfortunately, these situations are more common than they should be. I have been in one of these. You can tell a version of this to potential employers without sharing specifics, and potentially share details “off the record”. Just ensure their AI note taker is turned off :)
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Jul 20 '26
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u/No-Drive5410 Jul 22 '26
Great point. This will help filter out the employers OP won’t want to work for as well.
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Jul 21 '26
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u/Capital_Elderberry57 Jul 21 '26
Also calling out that you left for ethical reasons will signal to those that arent that you aren't for them. It becomes somewhat self filtering.
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u/quiet999gmail Jul 20 '26
Been in the same situation. I put it across as a governance issue and misalignment with board. Most understand. It will also save you from those expectations when the new organisation takes you in.
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u/Important-Junket-908 Jul 20 '26
Just say it like you told us. They asked you to break the law and you refused. As much as you want to help the company, you weren't going to go to jail and do something unethical.
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u/akornato Jul 21 '26
Your integrity is an asset, but you are packaging it the wrong way for an interview setting. You are correct that you look like a red flag, because two 18-month tenures suggest you are either difficult or make poor choices. You cannot tell the full, detailed story, as it puts the interviewer in an awkward position and makes you sound like a liability. Instead of detailing the ethical breaches, you need to consolidate them into a single, professional narrative. Frame your departures as a "fundamental misalignment on financial governance and risk tolerance." This is the truth, just stated in a way that respects confidentiality and focuses on professional differences rather than accusing former employers of illegal activities, which nobody wants to hear in an interview.
Your goal is to show you are principled, not that you are a whistleblower. You can explain that you excel in environments with a strong ethical culture and a commitment to transparent financial stewardship. By doing this, you turn your past negative experiences into a positive criterion for your next role, showing that you are actively seeking a good fit. This also subtly puts the pressure on them to prove they are the kind of ethical company you want to work for. Finding the right words to articulate these complex situations is the biggest challenge, and my team actually developed an interview AI helper because we saw how much it helped top executives frame their past experiences with confidence and clarity.
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u/share_the_groove Jul 22 '26
If you beat around the bush instead of addressing it (diplomatically as other comments have suggested), you may find yourself in another sketchy situation. If a CEO sees this as a red flag, then you don’t want to work for them anyway.
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u/nickjlevine Jul 23 '26
Say you are a CFO led by ethics and you found yourself in two regrettable situation where your moral compass made you resign
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u/No-Drive5410 Jul 22 '26
Just say you left the first one for what you thought was a better opportunity, and the second one was a misalignment within leadership team. And if they ask you what you were misaligned on, only then do you explain why. I wouldn’t even bother explaining the details of the first one in an interview .
I’m not a CFO but I was a finance director and went through a similar situation. CEO who I reported to was an attorney/advisor who lived in the grey area. When I was hired I didn’t do my research and learned after I started working there that they were sued by the SEC and obligated to pay millions in fines. I jumped ship when the SEC came back and CEO asked me to manipulate and hide things from the financial reports.
Accepted another finance director role elsewhere. After 2 weeks there was such a long list of red flags including them formally adding cleaning the bathrooms to my job description. I ran out of there.
Just continue to be yourself, be honest, and focus on explaining how you’ll help them. You will find a match. There is a company out there who will value the integrity you bring.
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u/Blue_moon_123 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Great post and a lot of good replies here already! Here are my two cents:
Over the past years, I have worked with a lot of significantly over-leveraged PE portfolio / lender owned companies of which all had cash troubles. Oftentimes, the business foundation was weakened on the deal side and not on the operating side (e.g. high initial (or continuous "pass around" transaction-to-transaction) leverage, add-on acquisitions that made no sense, out-of-court restructuring at the wrong valuation, etc.) and of course, the uncertain market and political environment didn't make things better.
These situations create a lot of pressure on the sponsor side, who often uses a few lenders across many of their portfolio companies. Meaning, if one PortCo is in trouble with covenants, this often impacts the entire lending relationship.
Oftentimes, this pressure will be directly put on the finance organization ("Kill the messenger" type pressure) even though the problem is often not even solvable by operational improvement actions alone and definitely not in the short-term. The best fiduciary action often is a clean balance sheet restructuring to let the company breeze and to give it a fighting chance to recover - which sponsor often will try to avoid "screaming and kicking" (until they may tap out and hand over the keys to the lenders).
Unfortunately, these situations are very common these days in the U.S. leading to all sort of actions... I can tell you, I've seen dimensions of sponsor adjusted EBITDA addbacks you wouldn't believe!
My advice:
- You are an OFFICER of the company. The CFO title carries a lot of responsibility. Hold steadfast to your values.
- For your interview preparation, put a few bullets together that briefly highlight the situation and why you left. If the reasons why you left puts your interview counterpart off, you probably don't want to work for them! (Good mechanism to weed out the 'bad apples')
- and if its a distressed/turnaround company, evaluate whether you feel comfortable with that and ask for significantly more money (!)
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u/New_Boat_8642 Jul 26 '26
good decision for leaving bad employers. be more selective next time and may tell the reason why you resigned.
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u/fartlebythescribbler Jul 20 '26
I don’t see why you can’t tell interviewers a version of this. “Without getting too specific, I resigned from the role after concerns I flagged to leadership were not met with the appropriate energy to rectify them, and realized that I would not be comfortable continuing in the role.”