Editor's Blog: Ever tried to sack a CIO?

Over lunch the other day the chief executive of a large technology company advanced an unusual argument.

His claim: of all the senior managers in a business, the CIO is the least likely to get the sack.

His reasoning: because the IT department is considered so obscure and so arcane by most business execs, it's hard to work out whether the CIO is actually doing a good or bad job - or indeed anything at all.

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After all, the sales director can be judged on whether that team has sold enough widgets, and the finance director on whether the figures add up. HR directors, of course, can be judged on the number of people they sack and the quantities of pointless forms they manage to get staff to complete.

But CIOs - according to this argument at least - tuck themselves away, hidden in the jargon and the SLAs that the rest of the business can't understand.

So regardless of how bad a performance CIOs put in, they can't be touched. Which is nice work if you can get it.

The argument reminded me of a concept in cryptography and computer security known as security by obscurity.

According to this concept your system can have plenty of flaws - but if nobody knows where they are it isn't a problem. Of course that concept stands in contrast to the idea of security by design, where it is built in from the start.

Now, I'm not sure I buy the idea that the CIO is the hardest exec to sack - but I do think there is a danger that many see 'career by obscurity' as a good way of protecting their job. The idea is that if the rest of the execs can't spot the CIO's flaws, then they won't be able to sack him or her.

And for those with little ambition, it might be a safe move. It's always easy to retreat into your comfort zone, especially if your comfort zone is so obscure that nobody else can follow you in.

But for those tech chiefs out there - and I know many - who want to make a difference to their organisation, and even aspire to higher roles there or elsewhere, it's time to step out of the shadows.

Nervous CIOs might be glad they are the hardest to sack but they are also the hardest to promote - and that is something they should be even more worried about.

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