A Field Guide to Hiring the Ideal CIO, Being the Right CIO

On the clear-eyed vision of the CIO role, and guidance for those seeking it.

Over the past month, I’ve had two conversations that stayed with me. One was with a new CIO stepping into his first big leadership role; the other was with an established CIO preparing for a final interview for his dream job. In both, I shared ideas I’ve explored in my essays: the importance of trust, listening, building scale, managing vendors, and the signals that tell you whether a CIO can truly succeed.

Those conversations led me to reflect on my own journey. I was fortunate to be hired by two remarkable leaders: Nancy Magnusson, a senior vice president at Pepperdine, and Jere Morehead, then provost but later the president at the University of Georgia. Both understood that the CIO role meant leading and stewarding IT planning and operations, while working collaboratively across the institution.

They gave me wide discretion to perform my role, were always available when I needed perspective, and tightened the guardrails just enough when I took on the toughest challenges. I am who I am today because of the chances they took, the trust they showed, and the experience I gained in shaping my own philosophy on how IT leadership can align with and advance an institution’s mission.

In today’s Dispatch, I bring those lessons together. I share them in honor of those recent conversations with colleagues who trusted me to help them think through their next chapters, and in deep gratitude to Nancy and Jere, who afforded me the opportunity of a lifetime.

Why it matters

Institutions search for a CIO for many reasons. A successful leader retires or moves on to a new chapter. Sometimes, things have unraveled and everyone needs a fresh start. Whatever the trigger, starting a CIO search signals an inflection point that demands a clear, shared vision to set the next leader up for success.

This choice is crucial as higher education faces its fourth major disruption: government-driven supply-side austerity, demanding more with less indefinitely. This, coupled with previous technological revolutions disrupting distance (Internet), time (iPhone), and trust (GenAI), has eroded public confidence in higher education. Hiring a CIO is not just about aligning technology to mission; it’s about bringing on a partner who works with the leadership team to navigate immense ambiguity together.

The ideal CIO for this era is a strategist and cultural architect, someone who collaboratively sets the vision and pace for how technology serves learning, research, and community. They protect the enterprise and its information assets while humanizing how the institution engages with systems, data, and decisions. In an era of continual disruption, the ideal CIO embodies institutional courage and clarity and models that for their organization. Empowering this leadership is essential for universities that want to adapt and thrive, rather than simply endure.

To make that choice well, institutions first need to understand what this role truly demands.

A field guide for searches: what an ideal CIO does

Most people think of CIOs as the head of campus IT, the person who makes sure the Wi-Fi works and the systems stay online. But that is a small slice of the role. A true, ideal-type CIO carries a far broader and deeper mandate.

In broad strokes, here’s what an ideal CIO will do for an institution.

• Act as the chief steward of institutional IT: They hold overall responsibility, supervised appropriately, for institution-wide technology decisions and outcomes, ensuring that IT strategy is unified and mission-aligned, not piecemeal or delegated away.

• Own and evolve institutional IT policy and governance: They build and maintain frameworks that guide technology use, balancing openness and control to protect the institution and enable progress, consistent with its mission and culture.

• Define and champion a clear IT philosophy: They articulate why technology choices matter, using this philosophy to guide executive colleagues and educate the community.

• Shape digital strategy to simplify work: They design systems and processes that remove friction and allow faculty, staff, and students to focus on their highest-value work, while acting in ways that minimize and control technical debt.

• Serve as a strategic, collaborative executive partner: They engage fully in cabinet-level planning, integrating data and technology insights into every major institutional decision. They act as the primary advocate for what technology can and could do; and, most importantly, what it shouldn’t do.

• Build resilient, adaptable digital ecosystems: They create integrated, secure, and scalable environments that connect people, ideas, and resources across the university, while actively paying down technical debt to ensure long-term stability and flexibility.

• Cultivate talent and set organizational tone: They establish a clear vision for the IT organization, develop and retain top talent, and create an environment where the team can “sweat the details” together. Through mentoring and inspiration, they build a culture of accountability, innovation, and trust.

• Lead with integrity and clear communication: They translate complexity into strategy, speak candidly to leadership, share uncomfortable truths, and are willing to speak truth to power. Through this steady voice, they build trust and model integrity in times of change.

These responsibilities are not abstract ideals; they are practical commitments that define ideal CIO leadership today. When understood and supported, they lay the foundation for meaningful growth and long-term resilience. They must be grounded in each institution’s unique culture, mission, and strategy, and adapted through inclusive discovery as the CIO search is organized.

For those hiring, the above duties offer a clear-eyed standard to measure against, a way to move beyond buzzwords and ensure you are prepared to empower real leadership, not just maintain the status quo.

For aspiring CIOs, this list serves as a field guide for what you cultivate and protect throughout your career. Your job is to adopt and adapt these duties in ways that reflect your style, experience, and perspective on how best to advocate for and leverage technology to advance an institution’s mission.

What to ask: questions that reveal the right CIO

Finding the ideal CIO requires more than reviewing resumes and hearing polished statements. It demands probing questions that uncover a candidate’s philosophy, strategic courage, and ability to thrive in your culture. The right questions move past surface-level talk to reveal whether a candidate is ready to lead at the scale and depth your institution needs. They help ensure you are not just hiring a caretaker, but a genuine partner in shaping the university’s future.

Questions on vision and philosophy

• How do you define the role of a CIO beyond technology operations?

• What is your personal philosophy on the role technology should play in advancing a university’s mission and culture?

• How have you adapted your technology strategy to fit different organizational missions and cultures in the past?

Questions on strategic leadership

• Describe a time when you shaped or influenced an institutional strategy beyond IT. How did you build trust with executive peers and stakeholders?

• How do you approach balancing operational excellence with long-term strategic innovation?

• What’s your process for aligning IT priorities with institutional priorities and what do you do when they conflict?

Questions on change and risk

• Give an example of a hard truth you had to share with leadership. How did you handle resistance?

• When have you had to simplify complex processes or systems? What trade-offs did you face, and how did you communicate them?

• Describe a major change initiative you led that required shifting campus culture. What worked, and what didn’t?

Questions on governance and shared leadership

• What does good IT governance look like to you? How do you build and sustain it?

• How do you approach building an inclusive, campus-wide partnership when shaping IT policy and strategy?

• How do you balance central authority with distributed needs across academic and administrative units?

Questions on talent and culture

• How have you developed leadership capacity within your IT team?

• What kind of organizational culture do you strive to create, and how do you measure its health?

• Describe a time when you had to address misalignment or low morale within your team. How did you lead through it?

Questions on long-term impact and resilience

• What does it mean to you to leave an institution’s technology landscape better than you found it?

• How do you approach minimizing technical debt while advancing innovation?

• What would you hope your legacy as a CIO would be at our university?

Candidates for the CIO role would also be well served by thinking deeply through these questions and preparing honest, thoughtful answers. Clear, authentic responses not only demonstrate readiness but help ensure alignment between your leadership philosophy and the institution’s true needs.

A field guide for becoming the right CIO

As much as institutions must have the courage to define and support the role, candidates carry an equal responsibility: to embody that vision with integrity and conviction. Becoming the right CIO means staying true to your philosophy, knowing what to look for in a campus culture, and being ready to lead without shrinking to fit someone else’s comfort zone.

An effective CIO aligns technology strategy to the institution’s core mission and values. In my time at Pepperdine and UGA, I learned that real success begins when technology decisions reflect the university’s deepest commitments instead of chasing trends. Trust is built by weaving technology into the campus’s shared story, making it a true partner in advancing learning and research, not just the latest shiny tool.

Simplifying work is central. Systems should remove friction and enable faculty, staff, and students to focus on high-value work, without creating future burdens. Protecting the institution means building secure, resilient ecosystems designed for long-term stability, not short-term novelty. Making data useful is about turning complexity into clarity and empowering wise decisions.

Technical debt is not just a systems issue; it is a leadership issue. Avoid creating it, and always work to reduce it.

CIOs also connect ecosystems beyond the campus. They build vendor partnerships as strategic extensions of the university, not transactional line items. This expands capacity and strengthens impact.

Above all, the foundation is trust. Governance is not a slide diagram but a daily commitment to transparency and shared stewardship. A CIO must set the tone, build and mentor teams, and create a culture where people feel safe to take risks and grow. Personal discipline is as vital as technical skill: you must speak hard truths, stay present during tension, and never shrink your philosophy to fit institutional fears. You are there to guide, not to conform.

For those aspiring to this role, remember: you are interviewing the institution as much as they are interviewing you. Look for true readiness: do they see technology as strategy or just plumbing? Are they truly willing to accept someone who will challenge their assumptions about how technology should be organized and operate? Will they truly see you as the most senior steward and authority for the institution’s approach to technology strategy and operations? A misaligned match will erode your identity, push you to move on, and ultimately do no good for the institution either.

The final word

At its best, the CIO role is not just a job but a calling, a chance to steward an institution’s future with clarity and courage. For boards and presidents, this means defining the role properly and backing it with real support. For candidates, it means holding firm to your philosophy, finding alignment, and being willing to lead with integrity even when it is difficult. The work is demanding, but when done well, it can shape the very heart of the university, changing lives along the way: yours, your team’s, and most importantly, your students’. That is the kind of work worth doing, and the kind of leadership higher education needs now more than ever.