Explaining difficult truths about IT to top management can be a thorny task and one in which a lot of CIOs may not have significant training. Healthcare CIOs who are also MDs tend to have an easier time of it, however, because they have been taught how to deliver difficult news to patients, writes Robert Plant, an associate professor at the University of Miami.

CIOs in all fields can use a method that medical students learn to deliver news that nobody wants to hear, Plant writes in a post at HarvardBusinessReview. The method involves:

1. Setting up an interview;
2. Assessing a patient's perception;
3. Getting his or her invitation;
4. Offering knowledge;
5. Addressing emotions; and
6. Coming up with a treatment strategy. 

Plant presents an adapted seven-step version of this strategy for CIOs.

First you need to understand the CEO's perceptions, which you can do by reviewing prior presentations, risk assessments, actions taken and their impact. When you deliver the news, do it in a focused, uninterrupted session, sticking to the facts and avoiding any improvisation. Be sure to relay the urgency of the situation and offer a specific plan and timeline for achieving your objective.

It is also useful to find an ally on the business side of the house when going to top management with news they don't want to hear, Plant advises. "[Rather than present the problem as a technical matter, which would reduce it to the level of a help-desk issue in the minds of many executives, make it a business problem," he writes. "Enlist the advocacy of a senior member of the business unit that would be most threatened by any outage, down time, or lack of opportunity caused by the system."

For more:
- see Robert Plant's post at HarvardBusinessReview

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