Finally, the line of reasoning that says, "Hey, we're outsourcing it all anyway? We don't need a CIO," is fallacious on the face of it. "One of the key roles of the CIO has always been vendor management, and that's going to be even more important going forward," saysFields. "The more you outsource, whether you have people jumping to India or whatever, the more you have to be on top of everything. If that's what a company's going to do, they need a really good CIO, and they need to make the CIO position even more important. In general, the business just doesn't understand the kind of risk'' you have to manage when you outsource.

That's the heart of the problem, and the most powerful argument of all. CIOs, or anyone in that position, manage an incredible amount of business risk. Even when it comes to highly commoditized IT services, such as keeping a network up, one small mistake can cost a company millions.

"There's no asset more important than a company's data," Fields says. "You can't give that responsibility to someone who doesn't know how to handle it. That doesn't argue for dumbing down the CIO role.

"It argues for making it even more important and keeping the seat at the executive table permanently."