But companies not performing PIAs are missing out on the important benefits such data provides. Although the challenges and risks associated with PIAs seem formidable, 66 percent of this year's CIO100 honorees always or frequently conduct them, according to a CIO survey. Since the honorees were chosen for their exceptional resourcefulness, their prevalent use of the audit establishes it as a best practice among highly effective organizations. PIAs provide a thorough approach for proving the value of high-cost, mission-critical IT investments and for gleaning project management best practices, which CIOs can then apply to keep subsequent projects on track. At a time when the value of CIOs, IT departments and IT investments are under increased scrutiny, PIAs are now more critical to CIOs' success and survival than ever before. "With the pressure on business today and the responsibility of IT to help the business units understand where their dollars are being spent, I really have trouble with anyone saying you shouldn't be doing [PIAs] in this [hard economic] time," says Jim Smith, CIO of Sun Life Financial and a strong advocate of PIAs.

How to Overcome Resistance to Audits

Many CIOs and their IT organizations shy away from audits because they think they'll be scapegoated if the audit reveals problems or lack of ROI. That's why Michael Barilla, vice president for business information services of Greif, a $1.6 billion manufacturer of industrial and paper packaging, frequently reminds himself and his IT staff that systems implementations and software deployments are not IT projects, but business projects. So if a project fails, he says, "it's going to fail as a team," and everyone - not just IT - will be accountable.

Gartner's Gomolski concurs. If an audit exposes a shortcoming, she says, that problem shouldn't only reflect on IT, especially if the project was jointly sponsored by the business, IT and finance.

"Exposing problems can be a double-edged sword," says Gomolski. "But it's better to be proactive. If you haven't achieved the value you thought you would, figure out what you can do to change that."

Another common concern about PIAs shared by CIOs, IT employees and even businesspeople is that they suck up too much time and require too much toil. But companies that perform PIAs say they shouldn't - and don't - take a lot of time to execute. Honeywell Aerospace aims to spend no more than seven to 10 days conducting an audit, and Sun Life Financial tries to complete PIAs within two weeks.