# C-Suite, Careers, CIO, IT Leadership, IT Skills and Training

Published articles for C-Suite, Careers, CIO, IT Leadership, IT Skills and Training.

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## The case for broad, experience-based paths to CIO leadership

DevFeed: [The case for broad, experience-based paths to CIO leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-accidental-cio-is-disappearing-and-that-might-be-a-problem-58595.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.cio.com/article/4225055/the-accidental-cio-is-disappearing-and-that-might-be-a-problem.html>)

Author: David Ivell

Published: 2026-09-23T09:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [CIO](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/cio.md>)

Topics: [engineering-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-leadership.md>)

Tags: [c-suite](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c-suite.md>), [c-suite-careers-cio-it-leadership-it-skills-and-training](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/c-suite-careers-cio-it-leadership-it-skills-and-training.md>), [career](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/career.md>), [careers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/careers.md>), [cio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cio.md>), [contributor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/contributor.md>), [executive](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/executive.md>), [it](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/it.md>), [it-leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/it-leadership.md>), [it-skills-and-training](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/it-skills-and-training.md>), [leadership](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/leadership.md>)

### AI overview

The author argues that less structured career paths once helped aspiring CIOs develop broad experience across programming, infrastructure, operations, projects and business systems. Formal career paths and credentials may provide structure, but the author stresses that CIOs also need practical achievements, such as leading transformations, integrating acquisitions, persuading executives and building teams.

### Source excerpt

When I first became a CIO, remarkably few CIOs I knew seemed to have set out to become one. In fact, the title itself was still relatively unusual at the time. In many organizations, the most senior technology person was the IT Director. The idea of deliberately building a career towards becoming a CIO wasn't how most of us thought about it. We arrived there almost accidentally. People came up through programming, infrastructure, operations, projects or business systems. Careers zigzagged rather than followed carefully designed paths. You took something on because it had broken, or because somebody had been fired, got dragged into an acquisition, found yourself negotiating a major contract, or suddenly found yourself, as I once did, standing in a boardroom trying to explain why something had gone horribly wrong. Looking back, it was a remarkably unstructured way to develop a senior executive. But I'm beginning to wonder whether that was also its strength. Somewhere in all that career messiness, we acquired breadth. Today we're much better at developing technology specialists and creating defined career paths towards senior leadership. Surely that's progress? I'm not so sure anymore. I've been guiltier than most. I've spent years trying to create career paths for my teams: defining roles, competency frameworks, development plans and logical routes towards leadership. It felt like exactly what a responsible CIO should be doing. Best practice, even. But I'm beginning to wonder whether, in professionalising those career paths, we've accidentally engineered out some of the messiness that developed us. Not certificates. Not CPD credits. Experience. I see this increasingly when I talk to people who want to become CIOs. An aspiring CIO will sit in front of me with a folder full of certificates, accreditations and courses they've completed. They can confidently explain what they've studied. But when I put the folder to one side and ask, "Tell me what you've achieved," the co