"It's perfectly acceptable for someone to come up through another discipline, as long as they know that managing IT is a discipline all its own -- and they get a graduate degree or get the credentials to do that," says Dan Gingras, a partner in the IT leadership practice at Tatum LLC, an executive consulting and services firm in Atlanta.

Gingras should know. He worked in journalism for seven years before he learned programming skills in the early 1980s. He worked his way up to serve as CIO, CTO and even CEO at numerous companies. "I think we're going to see many more [IT] people coming from inside the company but outside the IT organization," he says, adding that with the changing demographics, smart CIOs will be welcoming them.

The evolving workforce

Working longer

44 percent of global executives say they plan to continue working past the age of 64.