AI Skills
Most people use AI like a search engine. The ones getting remarkable results treat it like a conversation with a brilliant analyst.
If you’ve typed something vague into ChatGPT and been disappointed with a generic response, this article is for you. The tool isn’t broken. The instruction was.
Prompting is a skill. It takes about an hour to grasp the basics and a few weeks of daily use to get really good. Here’s everything you need to know to start getting genuinely useful outputs from any AI model.
The Golden Rule: context is everything
AI models don’t know who you are, what your job is, what the output is for, or what good looks like to you. If you don’t tell it, it guesses. And the guess is usually generic.
The single biggest upgrade you can make to your prompts is to provide context upfront. Try this structure:
The RICE Framework
Role — tell it what expert to be
Instruction — tell it exactly what to do
Context — give it the background it needs
Expected output — tell it what format you want
Bad prompt vs good prompt — a real finance example
❌ Weak prompt
“Write me a variance analysis for my budget.”
Result: a generic template with placeholder text that’s useless without heavy editing.
✅ Strong prompt
“You’re a senior Finance Business Partner. I need to write the variance commentary for our IT budget for Q3. The total variance is £1.8m adverse. The main driver is a £2.1m overspend on the ERP migration project, partly offset by a £300k underspend on headcount due to two open roles. Write a concise executive summary in three sentences followed by three bullet points for the action plan. Tone should be direct and professional, written for a CFO audience.”
Result: something you can actually use with minimal editing.
Five techniques that actually work
1. Give it a role
Start with “You are a [role].” This shapes how the model approaches the task. “You’re a senior FP&A analyst” produces different output than “you’re a management consultant” — even for the same question. Try it.
2. Paste in your data
Don’t describe your data. Paste it. Copy a table from Excel, drop it into the chat, then ask your question. The model reads it and works with it directly. This is where the time savings really add up — you’re not reformatting, you’re just asking.
3. Specify the format
“Give me three bullet points”, “write this as an email”, “format this as a table with columns for X, Y and Z”, “keep it under 100 words”. Be specific. The model will follow formatting instructions almost perfectly if you’re clear about what you want.
4. Tell it what you don’t want
“Don’t use jargon”, “don’t include an introduction”, “don’t recommend consulting a financial adviser”, “avoid bullet points and write in flowing paragraphs”. Negative instructions work just as well as positive ones and often cut out the filler that makes AI output feel generic.
5. Iterate in the same conversation
Don’t start a new chat every time. Stay in the conversation and refine. “Make the tone more direct”, “shorten the second paragraph”, “add a section on risk”. The model holds the context of everything said so far. This is how you get from a decent first draft to something you’d actually send.
Which model should you use?
For most finance tasks: Claude (Anthropic) or ChatGPT-4o (OpenAI). Both are excellent. Claude tends to be better at following complex instructions precisely and handling long documents. ChatGPT has a broader knowledge base and better integration with tools like Excel through Copilot.
For quick research and searching: Perplexity. It’s built for search with AI and cites its sources.
For Excel specifically: Microsoft Copilot if your organisation has it. It works inside the spreadsheet which removes the copy-paste step entirely.
The honest answer: try them all on the same task and see which output you prefer. The best model is the one that gives you what you need fastest.
Start here: your first five prompts
- Paste a dense email or report and ask: “Summarise this in five bullet points for a non-technical audience”
- Describe a variance and ask: “Write a two-sentence executive summary explaining this to a CFO”
- Paste a data table and ask: “What are the three most notable trends in this data?”
- Give it a meeting transcript and ask: “List the action points from this meeting with owners and deadlines”
- Ask: “What are five ways AI could save me time in a Finance Business Partner role?”