The level of CEOs financial knowledge and ability, can play an important and vital role in the success, failure, performance improvement and reduction of challenges of enterprises. Therefore, it is expected that the educational and experiential characteristics of CEOs such as University education, financial knowledge, and their ability can have an impact on reducing the financial distress of companies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of financial knowledge of CEOs on the financial distress and also to investigate the effect of their ability on the relationship between the financial knowledge of CEOs and the financial distress. The statistical population of this research is the all the listed companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange. A sample of 147 companies for the period 2011 to 2020, are selected by systematic sampling method. In order to test the research hypotheses, pooled data and multivariate logistic regression is used. The results of the research show that the financial knowledge of CEOs has no significant effect on the financial distress. Another result of the research shows that managerial ability has a negative and significant effect on the financial distress. Also, other results of the research show that the ability of managers does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between financial knowledge of CEOs and financial distress.