The top CIO challenges: AI hype, security and rapid change

What's the biggest challenge CIOs will face next year?

"The biggest challenge is in the AI arena. I was at a meeting yesterday, and the number of times I heard AI -- 'We need an AI agent, or an AI this, or an AI that' -- was unbelievable. The challenge is that AI might be a solution, but it's not the solution for everything. You must understand what problem you're trying to solve. The challenge is the pervasiveness of what people think AI is and where they think it's going. CIOs will need to crack that nut."

-- Russ Ahlers, CIO of BDO USA

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"Keeping up with the pace of change and innovation. We often find ourselves saying, 'No, the technology can't do that yet,' and then literally three months later it can. So, staying on top of that pace of change to help understand the challenges it can solve is key. This doesn't mean everyone has to be an expert in AI release schedules, but we should at least be aware of the big advancements underway and their pace.

Then, it's about getting our business counterparts and stakeholders comfortable with that pace of change. We've had the conversation of, 'Hey, we'll put in a solution that solves something today, but a year from now, we may have to rip it out and do something different,' which is not something we've done in the past.

It used to be, 'How do we invest in something and make sure it solves the problem?' While that's still important, now we're saying, 'Okay, we solved part of the problem, but now a better technology exists. Let's pivot here and figure out how we adapt.' So, for both IT and business stakeholders, it's going to be that pace of change."

-- Matt Watkins, CIO of IMA Financial Group

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"The simple answer is pace. It feels like things are moving at a breakneck pace now, but we're just getting started. The opportunity for threat actors to use generative AI to exploit existing technology is just frightening and fast, and I think that CIOs will have to figure out how to work at that same pace, if not faster. I'm not sure the market's keeping up."

-- Chris Campbell, CIO of DeVry University

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"It will be about keeping expectations around AI realistic and keeping up with the demand for everyone's ideas on how to use AI. We must prioritize those ideas based on ROI and business impact. We'll need guidance from leadership on the importance of each project and how they link back to the business.

And then, at the end of the day, everything revolves around data security. Because all that data must be in that data security bubble. Everything must be tightened down, locked up, relevant and secured."

-- Scott Sanders, CIO of Sikich

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"The biggest challenge for CIOs next year won't be adopting new technologies. It will come from how those technologies behave under real constraints. We're moving away from 'all-you-can-eat' consumption models toward tokenized economics, where high-intensity workloads like reasoning and code generation expose the true cost of computation. That shift alone will force more deliberate workload placement and, in some cases, a return to on-premises or tightly controlled environments.

At the same time, the harder problem is control. Implementing AI guardrails that don't rely on AI themselves requires anticipating failure modes up front and designing zero-trust systems that are predictable, bounded and defensible under stress. That's not something you can outsource to the model. It demands engineering discipline and a clear understanding of where things break."

-- Sebastien Jean, CTO of Phison US

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"As technology continues to evolve, platform decisions will become harder. Organizations will not be able to sustain deploying capabilities on sprawling cloud environments and an ever-growing number of point solutions. CIOs will need to be more decisive, even if it means not every stakeholder is fully aligned. Making timely, 80% decisions and adjusting in flight will be critical to reducing long-term technology and integration debt.

The need for data to drive decisioning and recommendations with agentic AI is also paramount. Maintaining data accuracy and access to real-time information will separate leaders in the AI race. Developing services that pull and push reusable data is critical to reduce the burden on development teams while allowing flexibility in the model layer.

Additionally, AI will change what staff will do, and CIOs need to be honest partners with HR and business leadership about what that means for head count, retraining and job redesign. Avoiding those conversations or delaying a hard look at operating and staffing models creates real risk. These conversations are difficult, but necessary for organizations to remain competitive."

-- Sean Safieh, CIO, global platforms and digital solutions at Sedgwick

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"The biggest challenge for CIOs next year will be shifting from 'owning IT' to 'owning business outcomes.' Many IT leaders are still measured on delivery and uptime, but the expectation has fully moved to measurable business impact, and that gap is where most CIOs will struggle.

CIOs will need to translate technology into clear business value faster than ever. It's no longer enough to execute. The differentiator is the ability to simplify complex decisions and communicate tradeoffs in a way non-technical executives can act on quickly.

Breaking out of 'hero mode' will also be critical and difficult. Too many IT organizations still funnel every decision through the CIO, creating a bottleneck. Scaling impact requires building systems, decision rights and teams that operate independently -- not escalating everything upward."

-- Kevin Rooney, CIO of West Monroe

Tim Murphy is an award-winning reporter covering IT strategy for Informa TechTarget