Some of the country's largest companies are adding their CIOs to the executive councils and giving them an equal voice in the strategic direction of the company, but nearly three-quarters of CIOs have a growing perception that they're not the first place their CEOs turn to form opinions about information technology, according to a survey of 200 CIOs by New York executive search firm John J. Davis & Associates.

The survey, which was released Tuesday, shows that CIOs believe their CEOs pay more attention to what they read or what they hear from other CEOs. The CIOs have an inferiority complex because for many years they weren't part of their companies' strategic planning, Davis & Associates president John Davis says.

Davis acknowledges that the situation has changed at top companies such as FedEx Corp. and Ryder System Inc., but says "that is rare air up there." At the vast majority of other companies, CIOs often feel like second-class citizens because the CEO sees them as the head of a cost-control center, not as an equal voice in creating new business models or new profit opportunities, Davis says.

"One of the cautionary tales of this survey is that there is an education gap between the CEO and the CIO, and it falls on the shoulders of the CIO to bridge that gap," Davis says. If a CIO thinks he or she is not taken as seriously as a report from an IT research firm or one of the CEO's peers, the CIO needs to be more assertive and more communicative about the potential business value of technology. "If they do that, they will have a more responsive and empathetic CEO," he says.

According to the survey, 57% of CIOs believe their CEOs turn to their peers in the industry or to professional reading as their most important source of information about new technology, up from 42% in 1999. Less than 25% of CIOs think they're the most important source of technology information, about the same as in 1999, and 20% of CIOs believe CEOs form their opinions about technology from social interactions or other means, down from 1999.