You may be called Finance Director, Financial Controller, Finance Manager, Company Accountant, Controller or CFO. But for the person running a company's finances, it can be a lonely life.

You are expected to be an expert on a wide variety of subjects; you are subjected to impossible deadlines; you have to deal with managers in other departments whose knowledge of finance is limited, you have to lead a team of possibly variable quality and you have to do all that while maintaining high professional standards at all times.

You have your professional training behind you, but while this gives you technical skills, it is no preparation for the complex challenges of the real world in all their confusion and ambiguity.

Try searching the web for practical guidance and there is nothing there. There is plenty of information on accounting standards or the technicalities of preparing financial statements, but no help for the practicing financial manager who has to deal with thorny issues every day.

This was the frustration felt by a group of experienced Finance Directors who decided to fill the gap by writing the Cicero Guides.