IT pros hear all the time about the importance of having both business and technology skills. But few people, perhaps, have taken this ideal to heart more than Ron Box, who is the CFO and CIO of Joe Money Machinery in Birmingham, Ala.

Box has an unusually varied set of skills, holding a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) designation and CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification.

“I’m just as much an IT geek as I am a finance geek,” Box told me. “Even the finance geeks think I’m boring when I talk to them about IT.”

Box started his career as an accountant, getting his CPA in 1991. He came to Joe Money 14 years ago in strictly a financial role, but felt like he needed a bigger challenge and took on the CIO role a half-dozen years ago. Box added the CITP (Certified Information Technology Professional) designation, designed specifically for CPAs, and recently completed his CISSP, sometimes considered the CPA of the IT security world.

The diverse skills have served him well, and Box urges his own IT employees to become more proficient in finance. But he thinks businesses haven’t done a good enough job offering opportunities to people skilled in both finance and technology.

“There has been a much larger emphasis on technology people having a business background,” he says. Yet “when you look at online job postings, it seems to me that it’s an IT person they’re looking for or a finance person. Maybe the jobs are still categorized too clearly as IT or finance without a mind toward really converging those two.”

It’s undeniably beneficial for a technology expert to become proficient in finance, though, says W. Hord Tipton, acting director of (ISC)2, the nonprofit that maintains the CISSP certification.

Tipton, who holds a CISSP and CISA (Certified Information Security Auditor), was CIO of the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2002 to 2007. When the department was building a major financial system, Tipton and colleagues attempted to recruit people who were skilled in finance and technology.

“I always preach to my people if you want to progress in your career, you’ve got to know something beyond information technology,” Tipton says. “If you’re a CPA and a CISSP, you have some pretty powerful credentials.”

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