In her climb from accidental bookkeeper to tech company CFO, Amy Kux has seen a bit of everything: small businesses and not-for-profits, agencies and venture-backed startups, enterprise software and mobile gaming, runaway growth and failure—even fraud.

And reflecting on a profession that’s purportedly all about numbers, the key to success, she says, is understanding people—both yourself and others.

It all starts with who you choose to work with. “Always work for good people,” Kux says. “You work for a couple of bad ones, and then you realize what’s important. When I look back at the progression from where I started and how I grew, the best people were the ones that were humble and took the time to get to know me. And when they pushed my boundaries, they did it in the most productive way.”

A Bay Area native, Kux is now CFO of Unbabel, a fast-growing Series C startup that offers AI-backed translation services for businesses. But she didn’t initially set out to pursue a career in finance. After earning a degree in psychology, Kux took a job at a mom-and-pop glass company in the East Bay. Shortly after she joined, the bookkeeper got sick, and Kux took over.

“I realized I loved numbers,” Kux says. Behind that realization was Kux’s understanding that a company’s books gave her a window into how it ran. “With me, the numbers tell a story,” she says.

A couple of years later, the story behind the numbers would get interesting. Kux was working as an accountant and interim controller at a not-for-profit organization when she was faced with an unusual assignment: unraveling a scam.

An official at the organization had been stealing from the institution for years. “I worked really heavily with the audit firm to find every penny I possibly could find that the official had embezzled,” Kux says.

Of course, no one can plan—or wish—to have that kind of experience. But Kux says almost everyone will find themselves in a sticky professional situation at some point. She tries to make the most of it.

Dealing with a misdeed taught her to be extra diligent when it came to establishing checks and balances, and in demanding transparency and honesty from the people she worked with.

Years later, Kux would get a piece of advice that she likes to share with up-and-coming finance professionals. Of the dozen or so skills that make a great finance executive, find three that are most important to you and build your career around them.

Looking back, Kux doesn’t hesitate to name her three strengths: building foundations, operations and strategy. She discovered them gradually, and they helped guide her climb …