Data and visualisations: interpretation difficulties, communication and manipulation dangers, added skills required.

Recycling an article originally published on Linkedin

Executive summary:

Interpreting data is difficult and may results in mis-communication potentially to manipulation. In order to overcome that issue Finance and FP&A in particular must integrate a number of knowledge domains outside of traditional finance practices.

The issue

We play a central role in obtaining, organising, analysing, explaining and communicating data and transforming those into information that can safely and trustfully be used for decision making or other management purposes.

To do so, we use technical knowledges and skills based on laws, regulations and accepted practices such as accounting, forecasting, tax, treasury, data management, etc… and more and more developed IT tools. Still, is it sufficient to avoid interpretation errors potentially manipulation? The answer is NO! There are other skills and knowledges, that are not finance specific, that we need to understand and use to avoid such issues.

More in the document attached

Data and visualisations.docx

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