The CFO Doesn’t Care About Your Completion Rates

And honestly? Neither should you.

My first CFO conversation about learning ROI did not go well.

I had prepared a beautiful slide. Completion rates. Time-to-competency. Learner satisfaction scores. A graph that went up and to the right like a tech stock in 2021.

They looked at it for about four seconds and said: “What did it change?”

I didn’t have an answer.

(I know. I’m supposed to be the ‘strategic leader’, but in that moment, I felt like a kid caught with their hand in the biscuit tin.)

I’ve been thinking about that meeting while listening to Simon Sinek and Will Guidara — the former owner of the number one restaurant in the world — talk about measurement.

Their point was simple, and it stopped me mid-walk. So much so, I had to write about it: The things that are hardest to measure are almost always the things that matter most. We’ve built entire organisations around chasing the metrics that are easiest to count — because without them, we don’t know how to prove our work has any value.

Sound familiar?

The Completion Rate Illusion

Here is the problem with the data your LMS gives you by default:

Completion rates tell you that someone clicked through the content. They don’t tell you whether anything changed in their behaviour.

Assessment scores tell you that someone passed a test. They don’t tell you whether they can actually do the job when the pressure is on.

Learner satisfaction scores tell you that someone enjoyed the experience. They don’t tell you whether the business is a penny richer because of it.

These are “quantity” metrics. They are the “showroom,” not the “engine.” Your CFO has already figured this out.

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The Quality Ratio

During the 2009 recession, Guidara’s restaurant was losing money. The numbers were sinking.

But every night, he was in the room watching his guests leave. And they were leaving happy. Genuinely, visibly cared for.

He couldn’t prove the business was “working” on a spreadsheet. But he could see — directly, in real time — that the human connection was working. So he held the course.

He eventually turned it into the number one restaurant in the world.

Simon Sinek’s insight in the conversation was that we need a Quality Ratio. A second number that tells you whether the work itself is good, even when the headline revenue number is under pressure.

Quantity (what we achieved) over Quality (how we did it).

How to Build Your Quality Ratio

This is what I’d ask you to build before your next QBR or review meeting. Not instead of your completion data, but alongside it. Here are three things you can try:

Try the “One Behaviour” Filter: Pick one specific, observable behaviour you were trying to change. Not “upskilling the team.”

Did the support team start escalating fewer tickets after the product training? Did new partners reach their first sale faster?

That is your quality metric. It exists in the business. You just have to go and find it.

Run an “Outcome Owner” Interview: Your CFO doesn’t own learning. He owns risk and revenue.

Find the person who does own the outcome — the Sales Director or the VP of Success. Ask them one question:

“What would you have noticed this month if the training hadn’t happened?”

Their answer is your business case. Not the slide you built. Their words, in their language, about their numbers.

Apply the Renewal Reframe: Present evidence of the behaviour change rather than defending the platform.

The platform is just infrastructure. Nobody asks the IT Director to justify the CRM by explaining how many people logged in. They ask what changed in the sales pipeline.

Focus on the cost of the skills gap. Ask what it would have cost the business if your people still couldn’t do what they can do now.

Who This Is NOT For

If your primary goal is to “check a compliance box” so you don’t get sued, this approach is a waste of your time. Stick to the completion rates.

If you are looking for a “magic button” in your LMS that generates ROI reports automatically, this isn’t for you. This requires actually talking to people in your business.

The Honest Caveat

Some of this data won’t exist yet. If you didn’t set a baseline at the start of the programme, don’t pretend otherwise.

(I’ve tried the “creative interpretation” of data before. CFOs have a nose for it. It smells like desperation.)

If you’re starting from zero, go back and pick one upcoming programme to audit from the beginning. Agree the metric with the business owner before a single line of content is built.

The number that will save your budget isn’t in your dashboard. It’s in a conversation with the person whose problem you’re actually trying to solve.

Go have that conversation before your CFO does.

Mark