I have a theory... and I'm putting it into practice, since it's better than any other strategy for dealing with the "I'm completely freaking out because this is math" scenario.
When the person is CFO, and attempts to shine the flashlight down the mathematical path yet still make them tread it are failing, and the test is in three hours or three minutes, then I'm going to walk them through the problem with the "and of course you know that you should multiply by x" approach.
This is totally bogus for teaching, of course, because it could very well be a bald-faced lie. For getting the CFO brain ready for a test, though, welp, we'll see. It beats "so what do you do next?" and getting 'I don't know, I don't know any of this, I can't remember, I don't know." My strategy will be to hypnotize them into being sucked along the process.