Why finance leaders need curiosity, judgment, and stronger human relationships in the AI era
Martin Uhrik brings an international perspective to his role as chief financial officer of Third Bridge, having worked across markets including Paris, Australia, Hollywood, and London.
Third Bridge is a global provider of primary research and expert-led insights for professional investors, advisers, and other research users. The company has approximately 1,500 employees across the US, Asia, and Europe.
As artificial intelligence changes how information is produced and consumed, Uhrik believes finance leaders must learn to operate at greater speed without surrendering their judgment to technology. During our conversation, he explained why human-verified intelligence is becoming more valuable, how Third Bridge is helping employees use AI, and why finance teams should spend less time producing reports and more time deciding what to do with the information.
He also shared the advice he would give someone beginning a finance career: Be curious, ask questions, and do not allow a title or organizational structure to determine what you can learn
What skills will tomorrow’s finance leaders need?
The fundamental skills of curiosity and business judgment will not change. What’s changing is the pace at which finance leaders need to apply them.
AI gives tomorrow’s finance leaders something we did not have historically: real-time relevance. It allows them to stay across the full breadth of the business, identify early signals, and move fast on what matters.
That is different from the job most of us were trained to do. Finance leaders will also need practical skills such as writing effective prompts, building agents, and knowing which tools to use for different tasks.
Why is human-verified intelligence becoming more valuable in the AI era?
As AI makes generic information from the open web and other public sources widely available, primary human-verified intelligence becomes more valuable because it remains scarce.
Third Bridge is built around that scarcity. We are investing in our verified expert network and compliance-cleared content to meet demand for insights that large language models cannot produce independently.
AI is designed to provide an answer, but it can hallucinate. Investors need confidence that the insights they receive are real, verified, and based on information from an actual person. That is what we mean when we talk about trusted and verified human insights.
How is the CFO’s role changing as companies become more reliant on AI?
The fundamental responsibility of the CFO remains the same. It requires sound business judgment and knowing which numbers to trust.
AI is nondeterministic, which means the same input can produce different outputs. Its results cannot always be predicted with complete accuracy. Because of that, human judgment is becoming more important.
CFOs must also understand how to introduce AI across the organization so that it increases speed, processing power, and operational leverage. Helping the business use the technology effectively while maintaining sound judgment is an essential part of the CFO’s role in the AI era.
How do you balance AI-generated insights with human judgment?
I think of AI as a powerful tool or an additional junior member of my team.
You would not outsource leadership, direction-setting, or thinking to a junior employee, and you should not outsource those responsibilities to AI. People must still define the problem and pressure-test the results.
When used that way, AI allows us to move at machine speed while retaining human wisdom.
I use AI every day. One question I regularly ask after receiving a response is, “What am I missing?” The quality of the answer also depends on the context I provide. The more relevant context I give the technology, the more useful its response becomes.
What does an AI-powered workforce look like at Third Bridge?
AI is reshaping how the research we produce is created and consumed. We want to equip our employees to lead that change rather than be displaced by it.
For example, we are deploying automated and agentic AI tools to reduce the time employees spend identifying experts and matching them with specific research topics.
Our objective is straightforward. People should spend more time on judgment-intensive work and less time on simpler tasks that technology can perform.
During that process, our employees are also developing skills that will remain valuable throughout their careers in the age of AI.
How can finance leaders help employees embrace AI while maintaining trust?
Within finance and across the wider company, we spend time sharing what’s working and what’s not.
People need the freedom to experiment, make mistakes, and learn from them. That makes AI less daunting and helps the organization become more efficient, identify the right use cases, and build the internal capability to use AI in everyday work.
My role is not to dampen enthusiasm for the technology. It is to establish a framework that applies a return-on-investment lens to its use.
I frequently ask three questions: What are we trying to achieve? What is the one key performance indicator we want to move? What level of usage should the team reach, and why?
Once those questions are answered, teams can operate within the guardrails, learn, iterate, and drive change.
What qualities do you look for when hiring finance professionals?
The fundamentals are curiosity, drive, and judgment.
It’s difficult to predict exactly what finance will require five years from now because AI is advancing so quickly. In the shorter term, however, I expect finance professionals to possess practical AI skills. These include prompting, building agents, and becoming comfortable with AI-native tools.
Eventually, these capabilities will become a standard part of the finance toolkit, much like Excel is today.
The importance of judgment will not change. AI tools will continue evolving, but deciding when to trust an output and when to override it will remain a human responsibility.
What is the biggest misconception businesses have about AI?
The biggest misconception is that AI will replace people. In practice, it should free people to focus on insight and higher-value activities rather than leaving them buried in the details of the data.
There is also a more dangerous misconception in the opposite direction. Using AI for speed without applying judgment or critical thinking can allow lazy thinking and poor decision-making to masquerade as progress.
That may represent a greater risk than underusing the technology.
Where can finance professionals create the greatest value as AI assumes more routine work?
The greatest opportunity is moving finance away from producing information and toward improving business performance and creating value.
I recently wrote about an example involving HPE, where the finance team moved away from producing a 100-page slide deck. Much of that work was automated, allowing the conversation to shift from reviewing what happened to deciding what the company should do about it.
My finance team is on a similar journey. We have automated a significant portion of our reporting and forecasting processes.
Our goal is to spend less time building reports and more time making decisions.
What advice would you give finance leaders who want to remain relevant?
Three things come to mind.
First, remain curious and continue learning. Technology is moving quickly, and the pace will probably accelerate. Finance leaders must keep learning to remain relevant.
Second, get comfortable with uncertainty. That can be difficult for finance professionals because we are trained to create certainty, remove ambiguity, and find definitive answers. We must learn to accept uncertainty and operate effectively within it.
Third, invest in human relationships. The deeper and more genuine those relationships become, the harder they are for AI to replace or automate.
What advice would you give someone beginning the journey toward becoming a CFO?
Do not become overly focused on titles, hierarchy, or staying within a particular box.
Be open to trying new things. Put your hand up, say yes, get involved, challenge the status quo, and continue asking questions.
One mentor advised me to approach my career like a journalist. That means asking questions and understanding that there is no such thing as a dumb question.
The more questions you ask, the more you understand. Over time, you accumulate knowledge, meet more people, and gain exposure to opportunities you might not otherwise encounter.
My advice is simple: Be like a journalist and remain curious.
Why finance leaders need curiosity, judgment, and stronger human relationships in the AI era
Martin Uhrik brings an international perspective to his role as chief financial officer of Third Bridge, having worked across markets including Paris, Australia, Hollywood, and London.
Third Bridge is a global provider of primary research and expert-led insights for professional investors, advisers, and other research users. The company has approximately 1,500 employees across the US, Asia, and Europe.
As artificial intelligence changes how information is produced and consumed, Uhrik believes finance leaders must learn to operate at greater speed without surrendering their judgment to technology. During our conversation, he explained why human-verified intelligence is becoming more valuable, how Third Bridge is helping employees use AI, and why finance teams should spend less time producing reports and more time deciding what to do with the information.
