I have always remembered a scene from HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon in which geologist Lee Silver teaches the Apollo 15 astronauts how to read the lunar landscape. He asks them to imagine finding a dead cat. By itself, the cat tells them very little. Put it in the middle of a road, and a car becomes the likely cause. Put it in the desert, and the heat matters. Find it in a restaurant kitchen, and the explanation changes again. The evidence is the same. Its meaning comes from the surroundings.
The lesson is context. As the dramatized Silver puts it, “the difference between roadkill and a meal.” He was teaching field geology, but the point applies just as well to institutional leadership. A decision cannot be understood apart from where it originates, the authority behind it, and the relationships surrounding it.
In this week’s Dispatch, I return to the question of who the CIO works for, but from a different direction. A reporting line on the organization chart assigns a supervisor and distributes authority, but it also influences which problems reach the CIO and how colleagues interpret the response. Over time, it teaches the CIO which forms of leadership the institution will reward. The reporting line establishes the CIO’s default leadership context, but discernment determines whether the CIO can lead beyond it.
The big picture
I have been at Auburn for eight weeks. The senior executive who recruited me has announced that she is leaving. The prospect of working for her was a big reason I accepted the position, and the attraction was less the reporting line itself than the leadership context she would create. But my next supervisor will be my fifth in five years. Reporting relationships often change, and experienced CIOs learn to read the new context, adapt to it, and discern how best to lead from within it.
Her departure changes none of my formal responsibilities, but it changes the context in which I carry them out. That does not make the job better or worse, only different. Earlier, I argued that reporting lines shape a CIO’s authority, access, influence, and path to trust. The question now is how each reporting structure shapes a CIO’s response, and whether the CIO can recognize when another response is needed.
I treat assertion, accommodation, and analysis as ways a CIO can respond to a problem rather than as negotiation styles. Each reporting line makes one response more natural and more likely to be rewarded. Behavior rewarded often enough becomes habit, and habits can survive after the circumstances have changed.
Reporting to the President: Assertion With Restraint
The president-reporting CIO works closest to the university’s primary source of executive authority, so technology problems often arrive as institutional questions that no single division can resolve. That context favors assertion: setting direction, defining boundaries, and using delegated authority to address fragmentation. But assertion is not aggression, nor does it permit the CIO to invoke the president’s presumed authority or support to end disagreement. CIOs sometimes do.
The danger is confusing access with authorization. Colleagues may comply because they assume the CIO speaks for the president, even when the president is silent. A president can endorse a common standard, but that does not secure the ownership needed to carry it out. Deans, researchers, system owners, and distributed IT leaders still have to understand what the standard requires of them. If agreement fades once the president leaves the room, the CIO has borrowed authority without building support. The result is a CIO who is visible everywhere but embedded nowhere.
The president-reporting CIO must also know when to hold back. Other executives may see consequences the CIO does not, so they need to shape the decision before it is made. Proximity to the president should broaden the CIO’s understanding, not become a shortcut around institutional judgment. Assert when the decision belongs to you, but build authority that will survive the president who granted it.
Reporting to the Provost: Accommodation With Boundaries
The provost-reporting CIO works near the academic center, where technology meets teaching, research, and the authority of colleges and schools. From there, the CIO sees why the same technology can serve one setting and intrude on another: lecture capture may help a 400-seat economics course but undermine a graduate seminar. This context favors accommodation, allowing legitimate academic interests to shape a decision even when they do not control it. That is judgment, not surrender.
Consultation gives people a voice in the decision, but it does not give everyone a veto. In a university, disagreement is normal and often useful, but consultation can become a way to avoid deciding. Local preferences begin to look like academic principles, and the same arguments return without producing greater clarity about the available choices or who has authority to make the decision. Implementation stalls.
I once called this CIO a bridge. The metaphor still works, but it only describes the work of connecting people. Academic leaders may have a legitimate right to influence a decision without holding the right to make it. Good governance makes clear the distinction between influencing and deciding, including what remains open and when deliberation must end. Consultation should inform judgment, not substitute for it.
Reporting to the CFO or COO: Analysis That Ends in Judgment
A CIO reporting to a CFO or COO works inside the university’s administrative and operating core, where commitments must be funded and responsibility made clear. That vantage matters because universities often call an initiative strategic before deciding who will pay for it, operate it, or answer if it fails. The context favors analysis, especially testing whether institutional ambition exceeds institutional capacity. Cost, risk, and execution naturally receive more attention because of the CFO/COO context. Those questions discipline the decision, but they do not settle it.
The danger is becoming indispensable as an adviser and inconsequential as a leader. You can see it when each briefing becomes more sophisticated while the recommendation becomes more and more difficult to make. The reporting line also shapes how others hear the advice. A dean may reasonably view a proposal for common solutions as another effort to reduce local discretion, especially when it comes from the same administrative structure that controls budgets and sets standards.
Recent work on generative AI and university data illustrates the balance. Our analysis drew a boundary between contractual protection and architectural containment. Sensitive data may be used only in approved services backed by enforceable university contracts. Restricted data requires a local model or secure enclave that prevents it from leaving the approved environment. The boundary is firm, while policy, education, and approved tools provide room for legitimate differences in practice.
The Reporting Line Is a Default, Not a Destiny
Presidential settings tend to reward assertion because it produces clarity. In academic settings, accommodation earns credit, since participation confers legitimacy, while administrative settings favor analysis because disciplined commitments are more likely to survive implementation. The office establishes much of the context, though institutional history and cabinet relationships shape it too. The person occupying it can intensify, moderate, or sometimes contradict those tendencies.
Institutions can eventually suffer from the behavior they first rewarded. A president may get stronger direction without the lateral ownership needed to carry it out. Under a provost, participation can become an end in itself while consequential decisions remain unresolved. And a CFO who demanded rigor may discover that the CIO has stopped offering an independent recommendation. The habit that earned credibility is the one neither the CIO nor the supervisor who rewarded it is likely to question.
The reporting line establishes the CIO’s default leadership context. Discernment determines whether the CIO can lead beyond it. For the president-reporting CIO, that may mean slowing down when colleagues expect a declaration. The CIO under a provost may have to call for a decision when another round of consultation would be more comfortable. Under a CFO or COO, the test may be taking a position once the major risks are understood, even though some level of uncertainty remains.
A successful CIO will use all three responses, often within the same negotiation. Analysis clarifies what is at stake. Accommodation allows people with legitimate interests to shape the outcome, while assertion makes clear who must decide. Building support for that decision may take longer. The mature CIO understands the advantages of their reporting line without becoming captive to its habits.
The final word
I came to Auburn expecting to work within a particular leadership context. That context is changing sooner than I imagined, and the change matters. My next supervisor will be my fifth in five years. Looking back, I have never thought of myself as having a bad boss. That is probably not because I have been unusually lucky. More likely, it is because leadership contexts differ, and experienced CIOs learn to read them. They learn when to accommodate, when to analyze, when to assert, and how to adapt their approach without losing themselves in the process. A CIO must also help create the conditions the institution needs. That means clear decision rights and relationships that do not depend on a single sponsor. It also requires the same candor whether the CIO has formal authority or must rely on persuasion.
The astronauts Lee Silver trained could not choose where the evidence was found. Their responsibility was to understand the surroundings well enough to interpret what they saw. The organization chart works in much the same way. It matters, but it does not determine what comes next. I cannot treat the original reporting relationship as the only context in which the work can succeed. My responsibility is to understand what comes next and discern how best to lead within it.
Dispatches from an Internet Pioneer is a free regular essay about technology, governance, and institutional change in higher education. Each takes up a question large enough to organize decisions around. This essay asks how reporting relationships shape the context in which CIOs lead, and how discernment helps them know when to assert, accommodate, or analyze. If this argument would be useful in your institution, subscribe or forward it to a colleague.