The best assistant-part four

I received a call from best assistant last Saturday morning asking me to amend the reports. I told her that I do not have internet access and could not get into office email at home. However, she still insisted me to amend the report. At 3.50pm she texted me saying that she already sent the email to me. With hesitated heart, I go to cyber café just to open her email. She wrote in bold red ink with caps letter saying that CEO’s found mistakes in the report hence it was not appropriate. I quickly opened the attachments and found that it was not the same version that we amended before. The report has changed into something else, not only the written part, but the figures too. I noticed she change the figures and made few reclassification on the projected position as well as the 2013 budget for the full year. The funny thing is, while she busy made some changes for the full year position, which I assumed just for the sake of cosmetic while actual position does not reflect such condition, she forget to make the same changes for the October’s position. Hence, it shows an odd report, which presented October position was much higher than the full year for certain expenses. It is a silly mistake for a CFO with ACCA certificate holders with 10 years senior than me. I highlighted this mistake to her and purposely did not correct the figures.

I then move to the work plan and budget 2014 report and found she also made some changes in the figures as well as the written part. Since I am already up to the maximum, I totally ignored the written part and start casting the figures. Again I found silly mistakes which not supposed to be done by a CFO. I corrected the mistakes with the correspondence notes and start sending back the email to her. Since I replied to her email within one hour, the best assistant questioned me whether I have checked the paper thoroughly and make sure there is no mistakes in the reports. I replied, yes for the figures part as I have seen the figures more than 20 times already.

The things that I would like to highlight here was that despite having ACCA certification with 10 years seniors than me, she still do the silly mistakes, which in my view was not supposed to be done by a CFO, or to be exact, an Executive Director. I began to question myself, why did she said the mistakes comes from my colleague and I? We have amended the reports in a presented manner and gave to her last Friday with all figures tallied and correspond to each note. However, they are not the same version that she sent to us. She has changed everything and finally when she cannot reconcile the figures she blamed us and said it was not appropriate? Hello.. The version that she emailed us was not only altered, irreconcilable, I also found a silly mistakes like semicolon in a tables, negative signs in inappropriate place, notes clashes with each others, etc. Who did the version? Of course not my colleague and I. Then, who should the blame goes to? Somehow, while her pointing the blame to us, it eventually pointing to herself back. Her action has shown her incompetency of taking the role of CFO. She cannot detect a simple mistake but asked the 10 years more junior staff to do so. If the most junior staff taking the role to check and correct the reports, than a question on where is her capability in taking the role as CFO is raised? Isn’t that humiliating? Isn’t that makes people questioned her “complex intelligent”?

Things are different before. I remembered that it is hard to find a mistake, not to mention a silly mistake when my boss asked me to check the report. Normally, when my boss asked me to check, it means to cast the figures, and see the corresponding notes in line with each other. The version should be the final one without any amendment, hence that is why we call it “check”, just to make sure everything is in order.  However, it seems that “check” in the best assistant definition is totally different. She most probably meant “please re-do the report because I have screwed and mess up the report and I do not know how to rectify the mistakes”.

Today, she called me and asked me to prepare the slides on income breakdown for the coming meeting. According to her I need to show something concrete in the slides, just to please the board members. Well, I will not ask to do so by my boss if he is around. He most probably will do his own slides based on his understanding because end of the day it is the CFO whose the one will present it. After all, I gave all my workings to her and she has all the necessary information to do so. However, she still insisted me to write her the slides. Somehow, I have a doubt that she did not understand the working and do not know how to present it to the board members. Really, I cannot help myself from having this suspicious feeling. It was supposed to be the simplest thing as everything has been specified in my working. After all, she is the one who go to the business meeting around the world, so she must have an extensive knowledge about the business and their treatment. Combined these together, it should be a simple thing to her, as simple as eating peanut. So I am really wondering why she insisted me to prepare her slides. It is sound such unreasonable, right?