Chief digital officer reporting to CIO? You're setting up to fail, says Travelex CDO

Sean Cornwell believes that a CDO must report in to the CEO because a CIO may be conflicted in his or her choices

A management structure that requires a chief digital officer (CDO) to report to the CIO or anyone other than the CEO will ultimately fail, according to the CDO of foreign currency exchange provider Travelex, Sean Cornwell.

In an interview with Computing at Nimbus Ninety's IGNITE conference in London, Cornwell explained that the CEO of Travelex, Peter Jackson, had hired him - and not the CIO.

"The CEO [hired me], not the CIO at all. To transform a business and for it to be done properly, [the CDO] has to report into the CEO, anything else and you're setting up for failure," he said.

Cornell suggested that a CDO has to challenge and change a lot of the ways of working internally in an organisation, and that a CIO may be conflicted in his or her choices.

"The CIO will have existing IT infrastructure, and legacy and systems, and networks and maybe occasionally it is good to leverage those things, but maybe it's not and so the CIO will be conflicted and they, along with their team, will always want to use what is there," he said.

"If you look at businesses who have been good at [digital] transformation, you look at AutoTrader for example, they didn't change what was there but they built something new - it's not necessarily right, and not what we will necessarily do but you have to make the right choices and be detached from it," he added.

Cornwell stated that he had to have a close working relationship with both the CIO and Travelex's product marketing chief.

He said that the relationship with the CIO had to involve a lot of trust and integrity.

"It's really important that there is visibility, particularly from the CIO and from the digital teams," he said.