Are CIOs headed for extinction?

Is the title of a recent article in InfoWorld as they extrapolate from a company where senior IT directors report not to a CIO, but a CFO.

Here is the letter I sent the author after I read it

"When I was at Gartner, we noticed a trend starting in the mid 90s.of CIOs reporting to CFOs. The CFO oversight was justified with growing alarm about IT budgets especially around ERP, Y2K and ebiz. So, the CFO has been involved with IT matters for years now. At many multi-divisional companies, since IT need to service corporate only functions may not be huge, they do not often need a corporate CIO. It can make sense to have divisional CIOs report to the CFO. But CFOs have so much to worry about around investor relations, treasury, board relations, annual budgeting, long term planning - that for them to seriously get involved in IT decisions or understand changing technologies is just not realistic.

What is more worrisome about your article is the focus on IT from a compliance perspective. Most CFOs I know are far more interested in the Cost of IT, and the Payback from IT. A level below, the compliance concern is far more accented - and not all justified. I have asked many of my clients if they used their SOX reviews to streamline processes make them leaner - not just review them from a control and investor transparency lens. The answer is usually some variation of "you really think our auditors would allow us tinker with our processes?"€ That'€™s compliance for compliance's sake.

I trained as a CPA in my first job at PwC. One of the few things I still remember from that training is the cost of an internal control should not exceed its benefit. As a country, we have gone compliance crazy - opportunistic laws from politicians converted in to half baked guidelines from bureaucrats being interpreted by auditors who really do not understand the impact on business processes they are asked to opine on. We keep going this way, CIO extinction will be the least of our worries.

 As for your advice for kids to get in to public accountancy – it certainly is an honorable profession. But, I gave up my CPA license a long time ago. There are plenty of opportunities for me and others to focus on the real payback from IT - creating magic with it. And, and by the way, CFOs I know will want to understand the cost and payback from compliance too - €“ IT related or not."