Editor's Blog: The footballing CIO

There's always a lot of discussion about what job CIOs should aim for after their stint as head of IT, and millions of words expended on the thorny issue of whether CIOs have a chance at bagging the prized CEO role.

So it's interesting that a former CIO has landed just such a top job today - and a pretty high profile one as well.

The Football Association has appointed Ian Watmore as its chief executive, due to take up the role in June. Watmore joins the FA from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills where he was permanent secretary, and before that he was head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit in Number 10.

But before those roles he was better known to us at silicon.com as the government CIO, working out of the Cabinet Office.

Chief executive of the FA is a highly pressured and very public role, and it shows that a technology background is no barrier to scaling the corporate heights.

Not all technology professionals aspire to becoming IT director or CIO, and not all CIOs aspire to be COO or CEO, but Watmore's progress is inspiring to techies that do have that ambition by showing such a career progression can be made.

Tectonic shifts in the way corporate IT is delivered means the career path for CIOs and aspiring CIOs is more complicated than ever. Gone are the days when you could join a firm as a junior programmer and work your way up to IT director over a few decades. Increasingly, organisations are looking outside of the IT department for their CIO, for someone who can bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the business - but this fusion of tech and business also holds out the promise that CIOs can move more freely into other roles, just as Watmore has.

Indeed, its worth pointing out that Watmore's path to government CIO was via Accenture, where he was UK managing director, rather than a more traditional techie route.

It's something we'll be writing a lot more about this year but I'd love to find out what you think too - what is the right career path to follow if you want to be a CIO? And where do you go afterwards? Let me know by posting a reader comment below.