Cfo Thought Leader

Back in 2015, Katie Rooney was only 7 months into her first industry CFO role at Aon when her boss asked her to exit the office. “He came into my office on November 1 and said, ‘I’m retiring, and I want you to take on my role. I’m leaving in 8 weeks,’” recalls Rooney, who says that the news triggered a mix of surprise and fear, which she recalls outwardly expressing with the words “Oh, my God!” Her boss quickly sought to ease her concerns. “He said: ‘You know what? It will be the best thing for you. If I stick around, you will never get the credit from the team,” explains Rooney, who subsequently swapped her CFO business unit responsibilities for her boss’s broader, divisional-level CFO portfolio. Looking back, Rooney confides that she expected to someday to fill her boss’s shoes, but perhaps in 2017 or 2018—and certainly not in 2015. For her, though, the timing would turn out to be most fortuitous. In early 2017, 13 months after she had officially taken on her boss’s role, Aon announced plans to sell its emp