Plato's Revenge

IT Management Blog: my thoughts about putting the "i" in IT

Are CIO's becoming like CFO's or is it the other way around?

I received an email from one of our team members following an article in Delimiter he read and asked whether the IT managers were becoming more like the Finance manager or the other way around. 

The article was about the observation that CIO's at a round table conference were talking more about the business and business issues than about tools and technologies. 

My answer to this question would be that IT managers have changed. 

CFO's have managed IT and the CIO for decades now and not always that successfully. I don't say that a CIO can't report to a CFO but as we have been able to read now already for years it is important for the CIO to have a good direct relationship with the CEO. 

Finance has morphed over the ages from pure number crunchers to general consultants and the CFO has become one of the key figures in any organisation. 

IT is a younger profession and is heading the same way. As the article says in Delimiter,"it is a coming of age".

I think that there is too much specialism in both areas that it is important to have on the top leaders coming out of their own specialism. Both areas are critical to successful management of a business and both areas need have good knowledge of the business in order to be successful. CIO's are simply catching up. 

But as I wrote before, it depends on the context how you organise this: