The CFO’s Cultural Code: From Misunderstanding to Trust

This week, CFO Club ITDC hosted a practical session with Svitlana Protsenko, CFO at GSN Games Ukraine LLC, part of the international IT company Scopely, dedicated to the role of finance leaders in international business environments.

One of the key takeaways from the session was that the qualities we often consider our strengths — direct communication, fast decision-making, and a strong focus on results — are not always perceived the same way across cultures. What one team sees as efficiency, another may interpret as excessive rigidity, chaos, or an unwillingness to build consensus. For CFOs, this means taking cultural context into account when designing processes, communicating decisions, and working with international teams and partners.

During the session, participants explored:

• Erin Meyer’s 8 dimensions of intercultural interaction and their impact on financial communication;
• how different cultures perceive feedback, deadlines, trust, and decision-making processes;
• four key turbulence zones for CFOs: communication, decision-making, trust, and deadlines;
• real-life cases where cultural differences influenced collaboration and business outcomes;
• practical tools for building effective cooperation in multicultural environments.

Special attention was given to identifying cultural differences before they turn into operational, reputational, or financial risks for the business.

We would like to thank Svitlana Protsenko for sharing practical cases and actionable tools, and Olha Cherepynska, CFO & Finance Architect for IT SaaS and Initiator & Lead of CFO Club ITDC, for moderating the discussion and keeping the focus on the challenges finance leaders face in international companies.

Thank you to everyone who joined the discussion and shared their experience