Yet, the CFO was given authority to make an important product decision, over the objections of engineering and product design. Can you name any successful tech company that sells a highly technical product to a highly technical audience that give the CFO final decision authority on product decisions -- decision authority over and above marketing, product design, and engineering?

The root-cause screw-up here is delegating product decisions to F&A. A good CFO adds huge value to a company, but should not have final decision authority over product decisions. That is not the role of a CFO. Any company that makes it so is organizationally dysfunctional from the C-suite down.