In defense of CEOs: Is information technology conservatism preventing CEOs from knowing what is really happening?

Poor tools to prevent and navigate through storms.The recent case at Barclays Bank and the resignation of its CEO Bob Diamond follows a long standing and disturbing pattern. Public sentiment, fueled by mass media hysteria, is that "heads must roll" and the bigger the better. The verdict of the crowd: "the big boss is guilty and must resign". No one is talking about what will happen next, or about the serious contributing factors that lead to repeated hidden fraud in major corporations and governments around the world!

There is another way to view this difficult problem. A CEO is ultimately responsible of everything that happens in a multinational corporation, the thousands of employees and the millions of daily transactions, yet today's successful businesses are largely computer automated, so we must ask; "where are the digital mechanisms to prevent, monitor and track deviations and abuse before they become major frauds?"

If a business ecosystem is relying on spreadsheets living in parallel and entangled with obsolete systems, where the data is being freely manipulated and adjusted without tracking, who is to blame for this IT failure? If information is power then what role does the Information Technology play in giving CEOs the power to prevent internal problems?

Why doesn't the media ever ask for the resignation of the Chief Information Officer (CIO)?

If a fraud is planed or ignored by a CEO, let him be punished, resign and pay for his acts as should any individual, however if he is also the victim of a deficient IT system then let the CIOs respond. After all, their job is to provide the CEOS and external auditors with accurate, valid, live and traceable information systems. The ultimate responsibility of any CIO in today's modern digital world is to be bold and dynamic not static and conservative.

Cristina Calçada

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