KPMG’s CEO Outlook survey offers an annual look behind the curtain at the issues keeping the top business leaders up at night. Every year, hundreds of leaders answer the call from the Big 4 accounting firm to speak frankly and anonymously about key issues that need to solved, and 400 participated in the 2025 edition. CEOs have a message for America: they just aren’t sure of, well, anything.
Business leaders told KPMG—and its recently anointed chair and CEO, Timothy Walsh—that they’re wrestling with uncertainty across several different areas of their work. This is well documented and is to be expected, Walsh told Fortune in an interview. “There’s this general, as you would expect, general conversation around business uncertainty,” Walsh said, adding that he was encouraged at least to see the “alignment” in terms of topics coming up in C-suite conversations.
