Eventually, my career had progressed to the point that I was interviewing with CEOs, chairmen and general managers of large enterprises for senior IT management positions. By then, I had learned to focus on the things that were most important to me, and so I would set out to determine the general management's view of IT's contribution to the enterprise. When it was my turn to ask questions, I might come at my issue by asking, "How does IT fit into your business strategy?" or "How does IT help the firm avoid cost, improve service and increase revenue?" or "Do you have a strategic goal in mind for IT and its value proposition to the enterprise?"

As if getting the look in response to any of these questions weren't bad enough, I would sometimes even things like, "We don't look at IT that way" or "IT is a necessary evil. It's techies with their toys talking jargon and not understanding the business that pays their salaries" or "They don't know their place. We need someone who will whip them into shape."

Of course, I didn't always feel like running out of an interview. After all, if I was going to insist that my questions not be met by the look, that insistence had to be reasonable, or I would never work in IT again.

One time in an interview, I asked a board chairman, "How do you see the distributed systems environment fitting into your business strategy?"

This guy didn't give me the look at all. He didn't even miss a beat before responding that distributed systems were very important to his strategy because he wanted his employees to have better access to critical information so that they could make the most effective business decisions possible and therefore simplify customer interactions.