Comments from the Gartner report's author, John Van Decker, have a harsh ring for CIOs. But they certainly reinforce the rising importance of the finance chief.

"This high level of reporting to the CFO, as well as their influence in technology investments, demonstrates the need for companies to ensure that their CFO is educated on technology, and underscores just how critical it is that the CIO and CFO have a common understanding on how to leverage enterprise technology," writes Van Decker, who is vice president-corporate performance management and financial managing systems for Gartner.

As for CIOs, they increasingly have become less focused on business intelligence, and seem in projects that advance computing and , he writes. Meanwhile, the IT priorities of CFOs are geared more toward improving business processes, efficiency and using IT to gain competitive insight.

"There is a message in the study that IT needs to get much closer to business. If they (CIOs) don't do that I think what you are going to see is more of the control being taken away," writes Van Decker.