‘Don’t call us bean counters’: Meet FD of the Year finalist Lorna Leonard

“Somebody once likened me to a spider in the middle of a web. I still cringe when I say this, but it was meant as a compliment,” says Lorna. 

“They said there was absolutely nothing that went on in the organisation that I didn’t get a tingle about. Whenever I was looking at numbers or finances, I had that sixth sense about what was going on and whether it needed to be highlighted as an opportunity or risk. 

“That was back when I was in employment but now that I run my own business I try and train my staff to be that spider.”

‘It’s my way of getting the adrenaline spike’ 

Lorna launched Leonard Business Services as a side gig 2012 and made it her full-time occupation four years later. It has grown into a successful team of 11, offering the services of a virtual finance department. 

“It’s absolutely not an accounting practice. It’s far more aligned to what people would look on as consulting,” says Lorna. 

“Although we do bookkeeping, we really are embedded in customers’ businesses. It’s a small number of customers and a high level of service for each one.  

“My team can be the finance director, the management accountant, the bookkeeper, the office manager – in some cases, you name it, we do it. 

“I really modelled the service provision on what you’d see in any business that’s at the larger end of what’s considered a small business, reaching up into medium-sized. 

“I saw that there were many companies who would benefit from a better quality finance team than perhaps they could afford or get access to – and I thought it was my mission to provide that. 

“We don’t do tax and year-end accounting, but I’m the accountant’s best friend because I’m constantly referring people to auditors, tax specialists and year-end accountants. We also manage that relationship for the client, so we’re the ones pulling out the material for the auditors.” 

There’s no typical client. The business has a lot of expertise in manufacturing but also has a “good chunk of customers” who operate only online, including software as a service (SaaS) businesses and a thought leadership community. 

The service can involve helping an expanding business to stay on the growth path – or helping a struggling business turn around. 

“I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to do things like snowboarding but I’m convinced this is my way of getting that adrenaline spike – to go in and make a difference to a company, because the difference we make is so dramatic,” says Lorna. 

“People have told me time and time again how much of a positive impact the team and I have had on their organisation, so we must be doing something right.” 

‘Finance isn’t back-office – it’s core to a business’  

Lorna is frustrated when she hears people using phrases like “Accountant says no” or when finance professionals are referred to as “bean counters”. 

“That’s not what we do. We want to do whatever we can to help our customers achieve what they want,” she says. 

“Sometimes we have to say, ‘Let’s think about how we might achieve this in a different way’ and I think customers appreciate that. 

“Our position is that finance isn’t a back office, it’s core. It can almost be a revenue stream in its own right. When you tell a business, for example, that the amount of work in its design studio isn’t enough to drive four months’ future sales targets, then you’re giving that business a chance to do something about it while there’s time.  In that respect, you’re helping them make money.” 

In her employed days, she worked for a company that was about to save money by laying off someone who was vital to delivering a big new deal. “It was almost like the film 12 Angry Men. I listened to all sides and said, ‘Can you deliver that job without this guy?’ and they sat there really quietly before saying ‘no’,” she recalls. 

“People tend to think accountants won’t advocate spending money, but despite what the numbers said, this would have been the stupidest decision ever – so you have to say so, don’t you?” 

That tendency to raise the uncomfortable topic is important to the way she operates. 

“There’s a lot of talk these days about neurodiversity and I wonder sometimes if that describes me,” says Lorna. 

“If there’s anyone in the room who’s going to ask the question that nobody else has asked or perhaps thought about, it’s guaranteed to be me. Somebody once said to me, ‘Lorna, what you do comes so easily to you. Do you see these things mapping themselves out in front of you?’ 

“I don’t know what it is, but I will sit listening to a meeting for half an hour and give my feedback and I’ll have spotted the people who are all talk and no action. I will probably have asked several questions that people have got the hump about – but I’ll have people taking me to one side and saying, ‘Thank you so much for asking that question’.” 

‘The last thing I wanted to be was an accountant’  

“Did I dream of being an accountant? Absolutely never,” says Lorna.  

“In fact, I would go so far as to say that the last thing on the planet I wanted to be was an accountant. Previous career ideas were a lawyer, a police officer, a journalist – and when I left school, I was really focused on becoming a scientist.” 

She left school in 1984, a “horrific time to look for a job”. She remembers her mum once sheepishly handing her a stack of post containing nine job rejections. 

“But one day, I got two offers of a job. One, in the morning, was for an accounts office junior and the other, in the afternoon, was for a marketing office junior. The one in the morning got accepted because it was the bird in the hand. The one in the afternoon was rejected because I’d accepted the earlier one,” she says. 

“And that’s how my accounting career started.” 

She spent years in the profession before deciding to take qualifications.  

“I qualified having done every bit of study off my own bat with absolutely zero support from anybody. I finally got there and, in the meantime, I’d amassed a huge amount of experience because people were more than happy to give me the experience of much higher roles, just not to give me the salary without the qualification,” she says. 

Her first FD role was in a subsidiary of a US company where she had worked as financial controller. After working as FD for a group of managed IT service providers, she became employee number two at a business recycling the PolyEthylene Terephthalate (PET) from plastic bottles. She describes that as “the best and one of the worst experiences of my life”. 

“We took that business from just the two of us to 65 members of staff – and then due to the worldwide drop in oil prices, the business became unviable,” she says. 

“Why take the time to source someone to sort out your plastic bottles cleanly in the UK when you can just chuck them into a container and send them to China and get more money? 

“I learned so much about plastics and manufacturing and it was a marvellous time, but so stressful. And the heartache of telling 65 people that the site was closing, when a good chunk of them had been with us from day one, it was sickening.”  

‘My job is to conduct the orchestra’ 

Though she’s a fellow of the ACCA, Lorna still doesn’t like to be called an accountant.

“It’s not the accountancy that I love; it’s the business, it’s the deal-making, the problem-solving. I like to be called a business person who’s quite good at accounts,” she says. 

“It’s that overarching, holistic view of the business that really does it for me.”  

She adds: “I’ll probably get shot for saying this but I don’t think a finance director necessarily has to be a qualified accountant. It depends on the organisation.  

“I believe my job is to be the conductor of an orchestra. The conductor doesn’t need to be a virtuoso but they do need to know what instruments to bring in at what time to play beautiful music.  

“I consider that my job. My musicians are the different types of expertise in finance and sometimes slightly on the outside edge of finance and it’s my job to make sure the right ones are pulled in when they’re needed. 

“The one thing business owners seem to think they should be good at is everything – but you can’t be. 

“Everybody should play to their strengths. Absolutely everyone has a superpower and if we can get everybody working with theirs, it’s generally a good thing because people normally like to do things that they’re really good at.” 

Find out more

The Accounting Excellence Awards are held on 8 October. Lorna Leonard’s business Leonard Business Services can be found here.