Whoops! Consultant Quote Ruins Otherwise Great CFO/IT Article

CFO.com has provided fodder for many posts. The last couple relate the remarkably clear and useful advice from two CFOs as they grapple with managing IT. Everything was going great- but then a major consulting firm partner had to say something stupid:

“There are CFOs who have that [technical] understanding but that’s not a prerequisite [for doing the job well]….The technology landscape changes so fast that it isn’t necessary.”

I’ve heard this many times. Basically it’s a cop out. You have to have a sense of the history, and future, of technology advancements in order to understand what to do next. A great example is the advent of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the trend toward software as a service (SaaS). Without a high level understanding how these approaches are changing, and where they’ve come from, you can’t possibly make a good decision on the best way to implement today’s software applications.

Fortunately, this excellent practical advice from one CFO overshadows this poor advice:

[regularly read] reports from IT research firms as well as the coverage in the daily business press.

How do you keep up with IT advancements? Do you use the excuse of “change” to be lazy about keeping up with what’s going on?

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