The biggest mistakes CIOs make in the boardroom — and how to avoid them

Julie Averill didn’t need a second board meeting to understand what she got wrong in her first. She had just stepped into the CIO role at REI and did what most leaders would do: she prepared deeply, gathering inputs from her team, building a detailed view of the roadmap, and then walked into the boardroom ready to prove she had command of the function.

She told them everything, but then they started asking questions. “The first was what could I do if I had 20% more capacity than you have right now,” she says, admitting it wasn’t something she prepared for. “I came in so focused on the details that when they asked me questions that weren’t something I had perspective on, I didn’t handle it right.”

The a-ha moment came quickly. “That was my lesson,” Averill adds. “It really is about a conversation.”

That simple but often missed idea comes up repeatedly when board members and experienced CIOs talk about what separates effective boardroom interactions from ineffective ones.

“The first thing we do wrong is go in thinking we’re there to present,” says Alizabeth Calder, a former C-level executive who currently serves as adjunct research advisor with IDC’s IT Executive Programs. “We’re not. We have to be there to facilitate a dialogue.”

Why CIOs prepare for the wrong meeting

If facilitating a dialogue is the goal, then most CIOs prepare for the wrong meeting.

“The number one thing people have to understand is the responsibility of a board member,” says Eash Sundaram, former JetBlue CIO who now serves on corporate boards. And that responsibility isn’t to validate technical decisions or review project execution, but focus on how management is thinking, and how decisions connect to strategy, risk, and outcomes.

Calder sees a consistent gap between what boards look for and how CIOs show up. “They don’t even know the right questions at that level,” she says. “As a result, they prepare for the wrong questions.”

So instead of anticipating discussion around risk, investment, and business impact, CIOs often prepare to explain what they’ve built and how they’re delivering it. The result is a mismatch from the start.

“As a technologist, you can easily dunk their head underwater in the details,” Averill says.

That instinct is understandable, but it’s rarely what the board is looking for. “Solving technical problems, implementing solutions — that’s not what you need to be there for,” Calder adds.

From presentation to dialogue

Even when CIOs understand the need for a more strategic conversation, the board itself can pull them back into familiar habits. “In the best-run meetings, you just have a conversation,” Sundaram says. But many CIOs still approach the session as a presentation, something to get through rather than something to engage in.

Averill says that shift, from presenting to engaging, doesn’t always come naturally, especially early on. “You have to know that you know your area better than anyone else,” she says. “What you don’t know is their perspectives.”

That difference matters. Board members aren’t trying to replicate the CIO’s expertise. They’re trying to understand how it’ll drive business outcomes. “They’re not out to get you,” Averill says. “They really are there to learn, and they’re curious.”

That curiosity often shows up in the form of questions that are broader or different than they initially sound. “Listen for the question,” Averill continues. “Don’t be quick to respond without understanding the question.”

It’s a subtle shift, but one that can change the direction of the conversation. Answering too quickly or too literally can pull the discussion back into technical detail, even when the intent was to stay at the board’s altitude.

Operating at the board’s level

Slight derailment of a discussion becomes most visible when CIOs approach the boardroom as an extension of their day-to-day operating environment. “Your board isn’t your project management governance organization,” Sundaram says.

Still, many CIOs default to that model, offering updates, surfacing issues, and walking through risks as if they were speaking to an internal steering committee. In some cases, that can create unintended consequences. “You can’t go into a meeting with a lot of landmines,” Sundaram says. “If you do, everyone’s going to try to solve your problems.”

Once an issue is introduced, the conversation can quickly expand, drawing in other executives and shifting focus away from the intended discussion. There’s a similar risk when CIOs move too quickly to quantify outcomes that extend beyond their control. “Don’t promise something that’s not your responsibility,” Sundaram says. Instead, he points to a different approach, one that shows up in more effective boardroom interactions. “The best presentations I’ve seen are when someone else speaks to the benefit,” he says.

That shift, from owning the narrative to enabling it, keeps the conversation grounded in business outcomes rather than technical inputs.

Eventually, CIOs who spend more time in the boardroom begin to adjust — not just in what they say, but in how they engage. They learn how to read the room, anticipate where questions come from, and how to stay at the level the board expects without losing credibility.

They also start to see the interaction differently. “Most boards are scared right now,” Sundaram says, given ongoing economic uncertainty and the impact of AI. “They don’t know what’s going to happen.”

That uncertainty, he adds, is part of what creates the opportunity for CIOs to play a more central role. “The board has to learn from the CIO,” Sundaram says.