It’s become increasingly rare for IT pros to be able to tell the company CFO: “You’re not the boss of me.” In fact, a new Gartner study found that at 42% of companies surveyed, the CFO was the top IT decision-maker.

The study found that more IT groups report to the top finance person than any other exec — including the CEO. But that doesn’t mean CFO’s like the responsibility: 53% of CFOs said they’d like to change this reporting arrangement.

The Gartner study found that 42% of organizations said their IT team reports to the company CFO. At 33%, it’s the CEO, 16% answer to the COO, 2% to a chief admin officer, and 7% report to other officers.

“Where the CIO should report is a question as old as the CIO role itself,” said John Van Decker, research vice president at Gartner. “CFO reporting can lead to success if the CFO has a deep understanding of IT’s value.”

What Van Decker doesn’t mention is the deep understanding of IT itself that a CFO often needs to make the right decision about where to allocate resources and when to deploy particular technologies.

That disconnect can often strangle an organization that needs to make technology decisions with business interests in mind.

Tags: CFO, Gartner, IT, reports