The variety of risks that can be bundled into the infrastructure bracket includes terrorism, natural disasters, geopolitical upheaval, pandemic and other seemingly unmanageable and impossible to predict events. The reality is that trying to predict such events is close to pointless and having well planned and communicated responses for when things do go wrong is the right approach.

CFOs, and company boards, might have to think a little differently in order to successfully tackle risk in today’s challenging business environment. It’s impossible to predict the scale and impact of potential events on the myriad different activities organisations are involved with at any one point in time.

While some risks can certainly be planned for and managed -- those ACCA’s Moxey refers to as the “known unknowns” -- there are other scenarios which simply can’t be predicted. Many of the infrastructure risks listed above fall into this bracket, with recent examples including volcanic activity, Australian floods, Egyptian revolution and Russian wheat-field fires.

“To insulate oneself against these black-swan type events, you need people who think outside the box,” says Moxey. “The only approach that seems to make any sense is to develop scenario planning. If you do that, you might not hit upon the exact scenario that happens but the very process of going through that type of thinking makes one very much more aware of the types of things that could go wrong that might have a devastating effect on the organisation.”