Neil Witmer, an executive coach, management consultant, and organizational psychologist who runs Witmer & Associates, in Oak Brook, Ill., has been helping firms evaluate executive talent for two decades. In that time, he’s identified six qualities he considers critical for world-class CFOs:

• Intelligence
• The ability to think in multiple dimensions
• The ability to operate at either a macro or micro level at will
• Broad business experience
• The willingness to take reasonable risks to grow the business
• The ability to read people (what he calls “social insight”)

Middle managers may well have sufficient intelligence to move higher up the finance chain, says Witmer, but they are often lacking in other areas. They have a hard time seeing the big picture, are overly cautious, lack social insight, or don’t have broad business experience. Unfortunately, he says, only one of those attributes – business breadth – is highly developable.

“The others are really more genetically wired,” he says, adding that while a shortfall in one or more of those areas might be OK at smaller firms where the CFO role is less demanding, their absence would be a “fatal flaw” at the Fortune 100 level.

What about so-called soft skills – a polished presence, say, or strong communication skills? The great CFOs all have them, Witmer says, but he’s not inclined to include them on his short list of essentials. “I know brilliant CFOs,” he says, “who are not terribly articulate.”.