Everything you are about to see is correct.
That doesn't mean it represents reality.
CORRECTLY WRONG
Why accurate financial reporting can still mislead management.
Leadership & Decision-Making
Acting on financial representationFinancial Representation
THE TRANSLATION LAYER
Operational Reality
Correctly Wrong
Correctly Wrong argues that organizations are not managed on operational reality itself, but on a financial representation of that reality. Between the business and the boardroom sits the Translation Layer: the often invisible architecture of definitions, classifications, timing rules, data models, consolidation logic, and reporting structures that determines what becomes visible and what disappears. Over decades, this architecture accumulates layers of legacy plumbing that simplify complexity, but also compress, distort, and sometimes conceal the very signals management needs most. The result is a paradox: organizations can become increasingly accurate in their financial reporting while becoming progressively less capable of seeing the business they are trying to manage. The book contends that the CFO's true responsibility is therefore not simply to report the numbers, but to design and govern the architecture that gives those numbers meaning.
The numbers can be right while the picture is wrong.
Financial reports are not neutral windows onto the business. Definitions, classifications, timing rules, allocations, consolidation logic and validation choices determine which distinctions survive and which disappear. The book makes that hidden architecture visible.
Mark de Haas
Mark de Haas is a CFO, restructuring executive, board member, lecturer and author. Across international companies, transformations and crisis situations, he has repeatedly encountered the same structural problem: technically reliable financial reporting that does not preserve the distinctions management needs to steer.
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