Pretend you are the CFO so soft payback claims and heroic forecasts fail before the real capital room hears them.
Optimistic plans optimize for the operator who wants to ship. The CFO seat does the opposite. It asks what breaks if revenue softens, which cost is fixed when you hoped it was variable, which metric is least sourced, and which spend you would cut first without theater.
This is one of the core moves in a serious budget, hire, or raise war game: after you describe the upside, seat a careful capital allocator and make them try to decline. The output you want is not a performance. It is a short list of material objections, the exhibits each needs, and the edits that would survive them.
How to cast the seat
Name a real mandate: protect runway, hit a cash target, or underwrite a board commitment without heroics. Give constraints: minimum cash floor, payback window, and concentration risk you will not accept. Without constraints the seat becomes cartoonish. With constraints it produces questions you might actually hear.
Write the seat into the prompt as a named role with a mandate. Example: "CFO: list the top reasons to pause this spend, the assumption with the weakest source, the cash timing risk that worries you most, and the ten diligence questions you would send after the meeting. Stay inside a realistic mandate and avoid illegal tactics."
What to demand from the pass
- Top reasons to delay or cut this spend.
- The assumption that looks strongest and is least sourced.
- The cash timing or concentration risk that would worry you most.
- What would make you approve instead.
- The ten hardest diligence questions you would send in writing.
Run that brief in Pingpong against the real memo, model, and exhibits. Follow with a home-team response pass so you leave with edits and source packs, not only fear. When the decision is a raise or board narrative, run this seat after operator and customer attacks so it can use earlier objections as ammunition.
When the plan leans on a single customer or a single channel, force the seat to price concentration risk in writing. Ask what happens if that logo churns, renews down, or slows payment. Concentration that only appears in an appendix still counts.
Pair with war-game a budget cut, before you cut burn, pretend you are the skeptical investor, war-game a board deck, CEO decision review, and the war-game decisions hub. See how to run a Pingpong.