Closely-held entrepreneurial companies always have some flair of secrecy. The Owners' lives are intertwined with the businesses and because of that they apply personal privacy rights to everything, including the company's commercial and organizational matters. This frequently leads to "need-to-know-only" modus operandi when dealing with employees.
CFOs, Controllers, Directors of Finance are expected to act in the same secretive manner. And I am not talking about non-disclosure of commercial secrets, compensation details, or owners withholdings - these matters are confidential by definition. I am talking about organizational structure, commercial partnerships, new financial relationships, transactional details, new venture plans, etc.
The owners who insist on such covertness make a mistake of disregarding the natural human instinct of their employees to fill in the blanks. In the absence of actual information they will cook up their own assumptions about concealed matters.
You wouldn't believe what kind of wild baseless fantasies I sometimes uncover: non-existing silent partners, astronomical sales volumes, mythical lines of side business. In one of my previous employments people even assumed that I was a member of the owner's family on account of my loyalty and strict work ethics.
That's just laughable, but there are far more serious impacts of secretiveness: people don't understand the mission of the organization, the commercial scope, the structure, the value chain. Most importantly, they cannot grasp their own place and relevance in the system.
The unfortunate effect of this disconnect is mechanistic disinterested performance instead of meaningful work. On one hand, the bosses insist that their employees are kept in the dark, and on the other hand, they would like to see high efficiency and productivity - impossible to coexist.
I have managed to convince most of bosses that while keeping the actual confidential information secret, it is absolutely crucial to provide my subordinates with the Big Picture and their place in it. I consider this to be the most important step in staff training and development. You will be wasting your time trying to teach your employees how to apply their expertise and education to the tasks you need them to perform if they don't know why these tasks are important for the company's, and consequently, their own prosperity.
When explaining their role and place in the Big Picture, I frequently tell the employees that the company doesn't employ them to pay salaries. It is actually other way around: if the company could operate without the employees jobs done, we would gladly do so and save the money we pay as compensation . But it is crucial for the company that the jobs are done well and that is why the employees are retained and paid. You will be surprised: it is not as clear to most people as you could expect.