The Wall Street Journal has a weekly half page devoted to my former professional as a CFO. In a recent edition, they highlighted a new trend of corporate Board of Directors getting actively involved in their firm’s search and hiring of a new Chief Financial Officer. The reasons cited included the increased importance of the CFO role in everything from regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley reporting, to  strategy and deal-making. A final reason was that former CFO’s are increasing looked upon as candidates to become a firm’s CEO.

My reaction to all this? Well, it’s about time! Time that CFO’s are getting the respect so many deserve, as they are often quiet and low key, yet are often the second most critical person in a public company. But more importantly, it’s about time that Boards of Directors are actually acknowledging this and getting involved in this hiring activity.

Historically, in many old line firms, the path to CFO was internally determined. Often it was a matter of paying your dues and moving up through various financial roles in treasury or controllership. If a business and its industry remained stagnant over the 20 plus year period it took to groom a CFO, that was a fine strategy. But businesses and their industries are not stagnant. Competition changes, mergers occur and technologies leap ahead. So the perfect internally- grown candidate of the past may not be best suited for a new environment.

The second way CFOs, and most other internal Officers were chosen, was solely by the Chairman or CEO. This was usually decided by the CEO alone who then informed the Board of his choice. The Board then dutifully elected the person to be CFO. Perhaps the Board knew a little about the person from HR succession charts but the Board rarely got involved in the selection or even with a token interview. This, in my mind, is wrong.

All public corporate Officers, including CFOs, are legally “elected by and serve at the pleasure of the Board”. Directors need to perform some due diligence on this critical personnel task. To do this properly, Boards need to spent time, not just in Board meetings or group dinners, with the senior officers. In fact, I would suggest that most of the countless, large, quarterly Board dinners I ever attended were worthless. Private one-on-one dinners between the various Directors and members of senior management would be invaluable to both parties. This would also allow the Board to have a much better of idea of who they were electing to be the next CFO or CEO. And if the current CEO objects because he or she is paranoid of what a Board member could learn in private from one of his team, then the Board better look very hard at that CEO!

Directors of large public company Boards are paid over $200,000 a year. Many of the problems Directors encounter when senior officers, like CFOs or CEOs, either abruptly resign or are fired for cause could be eliminated if they spent more time upfront getting to know these key people. So, Directors, get involved in hiring new, CFOs and, in some cases, other corporate officers. But also spend some quality time with the senior officers you have in place; it will be well worth your while.