Wherein an imaginary dialogue between a CIO and a CFO identifies, analyzes and suggests strategies to resolve the long-standing divide between money and technology
In the lobby of LargeCo's corporate headquarters
CIO Harold Peeples: Hello. I'm Harold Peeples, CIO of LargeCo Pty Ltd.
CFO Ben Courtanes: And I'm Ben Courtanes, LargeCo's CFO. We should probably begin by telling the readers that we're not real.
CIO: That's right. We're a literary device being used to illustrate how a CIO and a CFO can have a frank conversation about their differences and biases. Sadly, real CIOs and CFOs don't always do this.
CFO: Yes. There's a communication gap between my office and yours. Some people have even called our disconnect a credibility gap. And when it comes to your department, I can see why they'd say that.
CIO: Are you saying IT's not credible?
CFO: Save it for the dialogue, Harold. Oh, that's right, our conversation will loosely follow a method called Socratic dialogue.
CIO: We won't bore everyone reading this with the rules of Socratic dialogue, since we break most of them anyway, but the idea is to let each person elucidate his own point of view, based on his experiences, so that together they can arrive at some common ground.
CFO: And while we're imaginary, the business cases we cite are not. Senior editor Scott Berinato interviewed a number of CIOs and CFOs in order to identify the issues that divide them. Is that everything, Harold?
CIO: Yes, Ben, that's basically it. We hope our discussion here gets CIOs and CFOs talking out there, in the real world.
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