The idea for a CSO is to promote corporate synergy and develop a corporate strategy going forward for multi year plans.
Yes. Accountants don't make the decisions, we tell you where to journalize them, and how that can be done legally. We also make sure your tax work is done properly.
Finance people take more of a strategy approaching, analyzing the numbers that accountants have booked. They forecast, provide data and direction, and overall determine things such as where we may want to spend more, and where we can hold steady. They provide suggestions, not decisions.
Accountants and finance both develop budgets, but for different purposes. Accountants use a budget to see where the money the management is spending should flow to, and how that effects the bottom line. Finance develops how much of cash flow can be budgeted where.
A CFO should be an accountant or finance person with plenty of background in various roles. Their job is not to say no or yes to big projects, but to use their people to show how projects are attainable, and what is affordable. When a CFO oversteps is when they are provided with more power than necessary (i.e. they veto something based on budget alone, without reworking the project or the budget). A CFO's main job is to ensure that the financials a CEO signs off on are true and correct. It is to manage the finance and accounting employees who pull together the massive amounts of data and make those statements.
CFO's who become CEO's are those that can work numbers and develop people at the same time. They can see the data as both concrete (for numbers being published, like a 10K) and flexible - for numbers being worked on, such as budgets for large scale projects. They can see where money should be spent and how to spend that money wisely, and also make cuts when necessary. They can do this while managing the folks who are developing and innovating - without taking away that development and innovation.
