The other day, The Wall Street Journal ran a profile piece on the CFO of Lehman Bros, Erin Callan. The 42-year-old blonde is described as someone "who topples much of the conventional wisdom about finance chiefs".

Said to be "the highest-ranking woman on Wall Street", it's neither her gender nor her age that has The Wall Street Journal so shook up. "Unlike Lehman's two prior finance chiefs, Ms Callan isn't an accountant; nor has she worked in the finance department." A tax lawyer-turned-investment banker, she is said to receive "a slimmer daily financial summary than predecessors", her preferred means of information-gathering being "the trading floor contacts built during her 13-year Lehman career".

But get this: "She embraces television" - "embraces"? Apparently that means "appearing frequently". Contrast that with Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar, the longest-serving FD - sorry, CFO - on Wall Street. "Mr Viniar has never" - gasp! - "made an appearance on CNBC".

Callan is certainly being commended for her greater openness, transparency and candour. Having forecast in January that the bank's return on equity would average in the mid- to high teens, it's currently around 9%. "Sometimes," she said, "in hindsight, your forecast will not have been accurate based on the real world outcome." Well, what else would the accuracy of your forecast be based on???

We'll watch Ms Callan with interest, we think. It will be enlightening to see whether her CFO-lite approach to financial management is the better route to take, or whether her lack of finance department experience ultimately proves her undoing, as it has done for organisations as diverse as Enron and Shell.