CIO.com published a seven point playbook today by Linda Rosencrance on how technology leaders should deliver bad news without losing executive trust. The article is short by the standards of strategic commentary, but it lands at a moment when many transformation programs are running into their first material slip of the year, and the framing is more useful than the headline suggests.
The opening principle is the one most CIOs already say they believe but rarely operationalize: build transparency early so bad news is never a surprise. Sumit Johar, CIO at BlackLine, frames the failure mode bluntly. The worst place to be when delivering bad news is one where every executive in the room asks how this could have happened, because no prior conversation prepared them for the risk. The fix is regular, factual conversations about initiative status, with explicit discussion of risk and trade off, so that when a problem surfaces the conversation can move directly to solutions rather than blame. For organizations running multi year ERP, core banking or supply chain modernization programs, that cadence is the single most undervalued governance artifact.
The second principle, leading with the main issue immediately and clearly, is reinforced by two strong contributions. Executive communications coach Debbi McCullough argues that keeping the bottom line on top is essential and routinely overlooked, because burying the headline frustrates C level leaders who want to know what is happening from the opening sentence. Ghaleb El Masri, managing director and partner at Adaptovate, offers the most portable artifact in the piece: a simple decision ready sequence of what happened, what the business impact is, what has been done to contain it, and what decision is needed now. We have seen this format work in steering committees when the alternative is a 40 slide post mortem that buries the action item.
The third principle, translating technical problems into business impact, is familiar but worth repeating. Eric Nitzberg of Sierra Leadership argues that the biggest mistake technical leaders make in the C suite is overusing jargon. The recommended posture is to speak in plain intelligent business language, framing technical issues in terms of cost, timing and revenue impact. Patty Patria, CIO at Babson College, illustrates the approach with an ERP example, where presenting the detailed facts of each blocker alongside multiple remediation alternatives produced a constructive conversation that ended in a six month extension agreed by all stakeholders. That outcome, an honest extension rather than a quiet failure, is exactly the kind of result the playbook is designed to produce.
The fourth principle, bringing solutions and showing ownership, is where the piece is most direct. Sesh Tirumala, CIO at Western Digital, argues against the framing of bad news entirely. There are problems and there are paths forward, and the most effective thing a CIO can do is walk in with the problem clearly defined and a plan already in hand. The recommended ratio of one sentence on the problem and three sentences on the response is a useful discipline for any team preparing a steering committee read out. The fifth principle, sticking to the facts and avoiding speculation, is the one most often violated in real meetings, where the temptation to explain causation before investigation closes is strong and the cost of revising the story later is high.
For technology leaders running transformation programs, the article is best read as a change management asset rather than a communications tip sheet. The pattern of bad news arriving late, framed defensively and stripped of decision options is the single most reliable predictor we have of programs losing executive sponsorship in the second year. Each of the principles in the playbook is a concrete countermeasure. Build the transparency cadence into the program governance model from day one. Codify the decision ready sequence as the standard format for any escalation. Train program managers to translate technical issues into business impact as a default, not an afterthought. Require that every escalation arrive with a clear set of alternatives and a recommendation. Hold the line on factual reporting, even when speculation is faster and more politically comfortable.
The broader context is that 2026 is shaping up as a hard year for large transformation programs. AI driven scope creep, cost discipline pressure on cloud and software spend, and a constant stream of vendor pivots are creating more reasons for slippage, not fewer. The CIOs who hold executive trust through that turbulence will not be the ones who avoid bad news, because the bad news is coming. They will be the ones who have built the muscle to deliver it cleanly, with ownership and a credible plan, before anyone else in the room has to ask. That is a learned discipline, and the playbook published today is a reasonable starting curriculum for any technology leadership team that has not yet codified its own.
