AI adoption is accelerating faster than oversight, creating an AI governance gap that requires urgent action.

According to a September 2025 Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Tines, 54% of IT leaders say that ensuring AI solutions comply with privacy and governance regulations is a top priority for the next 12 months. At the same time, 38% say governance and security concerns are the biggest challenge to scaling AI.

With governance as both a top priority and the biggest roadblock, CIOs must bridge this gap to securely and compliantly lead their organizations through this transformation. Here’s how:

Empower employees to use AI responsibly

AI is a major paradigm shift. With AI baked into everything from project management software to communication apps, every department can now adopt AI tools, not just IT.

This can lead to major productivity gains – but only if employees are confident in the outputs. Instead, the Forrester study discovered that 40% of IT leaders say employees don’t trust AI-generated results. Without trust, teams won’t leverage these tools to their full potential, resulting in poor ROI on AI initiatives and halted progress.

What’s more, the influx of AI tools also amplifies risk. Shadow AI, compliance failures and data leakage can all creep in through the AI governance gap. To combat this, 73% of IT leaders highlight visibility across IT systems as critical or important.

Strategy: Roll out mandatory AI awareness training

To get the most from AI while staying secure and compliant, CIOs should lead company-wide training programs that teach all employees best practices. Define safe use cases and sanctioned tools, implement guardrails and outline escalation paths to empower everyone to use AI responsibly, so they can enhance their everyday workflows without IT teams losing oversight or introducing risk.

Deepen strategic influence

High-level AI governance decisions are made at the board level. CIOs need a strong voice in these rooms to influence strategy, guide effective implementation and get executive buy-in.

The Forrester study shows why this matters: 38% of IT leaders say their organization underestimates IT, 40% cite lack of visibility as a barrier to board-level impact and 45% point to lack of executive sponsorship as a major blocker to AI orchestration.

Influence can’t stop at the top. CIOs also need to shape how employees adopt and use AI. Governance will only scale if employees understand, trust and follow the guardrails CIOs put in place.

Strategy: Build trust through transparency

Establish a standard reporting framework that specifically tracks AI initiatives' impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) like ROI, revenue and efficiency. Implement visibility tools to track AI adoption and governance across the enterprise. These tools provide the data-backed narrative needed for board-level influence. Share wins with executives and employees to prove impact, build trust and strengthen influence at every level.

Build AI guardrails and frameworks

Beyond awareness, employees need practical skills and governance frameworks to enable them to use AI responsibly and ethically.

AI orchestration plays a critical role by embedding compliance and governance into workflows. This is how CIOs can operationalize principles like transparency, accountability and bias mitigation across the enterprise. Without orchestration, half of IT leaders say it’s a major challenge to ensure AI practices are ethical and transparent.

Strategy: Develop workflows and playbooks that provide clear guidelines

There’s no universal AI governance playbook, so CIOs must write their own. Map out workflows for key processes and clearly define when and how AI can be used. Outline when AI agents can act autonomously versus when human approvals are required. Equip teams with playbooks, workflows and hands-on programs so they can make informed decisions aligned with organizational goals and governance policies.

Make AI governance a shared responsibility

AI governance isn’t just IT’s responsibility. It’s an organization-wide priority. Collaboration is essential to unlocking the full benefits of AI: 51% of IT leaders say visibility across departments is critical to scaling AI, while 49% cite competing priorities between teams as a top barrier.

Strategy: Create a cross-functional AI governance council

Partner with other departments, like Risk, Legal and Compliance, to create a cross-functional AI governance council. This allows CIOs to work alongside other stakeholders to co-own governance frameworks, ensure enterprise-wide visibility and align on key goals like improving compliance, resilience and efficiency.

Turn AI governance into a lasting advantage

AI governance is still in its early stages, but CIOs can set the direction. By driving training, building influence, implementing guardrails and aligning stakeholders, they can unlock AI’s potential and turn governance from a risk into a scalable business advantage.