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Vijay Ramachandran is the Editor-in-Chief of CIO

Beware of the CFO

01 Jan 2008

While all panel discussions at CIO | 08 The Year Ahead generated debate, none was as heated as the one which went over the evolution of the CIO role. Interestingly, all the panelists were convinced that moving forward the role would fall more often to a nontechnical person. As you might guess this was not a statement that their peers in the audience left unchallenged. Among the barrage of questions that followed, the one that intrigued me the most was - "How would an admin guy know which router is best suited for an organization?"

Leaving aside why a CIO needed to be the person choosing routers, say five years from now, I was more worried about the present role of the IT leader who raised that issue. Strategic? I don't think so. It's not too difficult to figure out that among the CIOs out there, there are a fair number who have allowed themselves to be consumed by the operational, the day-to-day, the routine. They've remained cost, purchase and control focused. So why haven't they been able to make the logical leap? There's a hypothesis in my mind that I've been testing over the past few months. My premise is that often the factor that hinders the growth of a CIO professionally (personally as well) is that redoubtable C-suiter: the CFO.

Reporting in to a CFO makes CIOs view their organization from the restricted angle that finance provides.

Reporting in to a CFO gives CIOs a blinkered vision - those who do so, I've discovered, see their organization overwhelmingly from the restricted angle that finance provides. When I bounced these thoughts off Ericsson CIO Tamal Chakravorty, he reverted: "My experience very clearly states that as long as a CIO is under the aegis of a finance guy he will slowly but surely start feeling out of place as the business grows. A control attitude does not go hand in hand with a growth attitude. It is then that a CIO feels out of place." Chakravorty went on to add that as long as a CIO could think and act like a CEO of his own little business there was hope. "For this to happen he needs to be part of the board room agenda, maybe through reporting to the CEO. This is the only way he can become business savvy and not just relate to costs," he observed. Do you report in to a CFO? Has this impacted your role and career? Write in and let me know.