Methodology
Filings first. A human signs.
CFO Voice is produced by software agents under a human editor. Agents gather filings and draft records; an automated gate enforces the rules below on every draft; the editor approves each claim about a named person before it publishes. This page is the whole method.
Sources, in order of trust
Tier 1
SEC filings
A Form 8-K, Item 5.02, is where a US public company must report that its principal financial officer was appointed, resigned, retired or was terminated. It is free, dated and filed by the company itself, so it comes first. The roster uses the signature block of the latest Form 10-K, where the principal financial officer signs by name and title. Earnings quotes come from the release a company files under Item 2.02, usually Exhibit 99.1.
Tier 2
The company's own releases and transcripts
Press releases and earnings-call transcripts published on the company's own website. For quotes, these and SEC filings are the only allowed sources. We do not use paywalled or third-party transcript sites.
Tier 3
News reports
News coverage helps us find a change early. On its own, a news report never establishes a record: a move sourced only to news needs two independent sources on different websites, and we look for the matching 8-K within three days either side.
The rules every draft must pass
These run as code on every draft and every build. A draft that breaks one cannot publish.
Rule 1
Every move is sourced
Each move cites an SEC filing, or at least two independent sources on different websites.
Rule 2
Departures in the company's words
Departure, interim and transition records carry the filing's own language, copied word for word and checked character by character against the filing.
Rule 3
No loaded words
Words like fired, ousted, abrupt or scandal can appear in a record only if they appear in the quoted source. We never add them.
Rule 4
No investment talk
Nothing we write says buy, sell, bullish, price target or anything like it. Only a company's own quoted words may contain such terms.
Rule 5
Honest dates
Every date says how precise it is: an exact day, a week, or a month. A month is never shown as a day.
Rule 6
Verified, not 'since'
A roster seat shows the date of the filing that establishes it: 'verified' on that day. A start date appears only when a filing states it.
Rule 7
Quotes are quotes
A quote is forty words or fewer, verbatim, attributed by the company to a named CFO, with exactly one source on sec.gov or the company's own website. The source text must contain the quote and the speaker's name and title.
Rule 8
Interviews are real
An interview appears only when the subject consented, the method is recorded, and a named person approved it. Agents draft questions; they never write answers.
Rule 9
Drafts never publish
Agents can only create drafts. Only a human can mark a record verified, and a draft is left out of the site entirely, not hidden.
Rule 10
Human merge
Every change to published content arrives through a reviewed pull request merged by a person.
Rule 11
Numbers from the table
Every number in an analysis piece must appear in the data table it was written from, which is published alongside it.
How a sentence becomes a quote
Each week the earnings desk reads the Item 2.02 earnings releases filed by companies on the record and keeps only sentences the release attributes to its CFO by name, such as “…,” said Jane Doe, Chief Financial Officer. A sentence longer than forty words is cut at a sentence boundary or dropped. Nothing is reworded.
Interviews start with a drafted request and questions grounded in the company's filings. A person sends the request, conducts the interview, and publishes the answers as given, after the CFO consents.
CFO appointments and departures live on the sister publication, CFO Tribune.
What agents never do: publish, merge, send email, invent a person or a quote, write an interview answer, or offer a view on a company's stock.
Something wrong? See corrections.