AI for CIOs
How do you respond to shadow AI without driving it further underground?
SimplSolutions editorial team · IT leadership · 4 min read
Published
AI-assisted original editorial guidance. Calculations and scenarios are illustrative, not customer results.
Investigate the unmet task
Employees using an unapproved AI tool may be trying to summarize a document, draft a routine reply or find an internal answer. Start by identifying the task and the information involved, not by assuming every use has the same risk. Ask where the approved route is too slow, unavailable or unclear. Do not request that employees reproduce private prompts in an unrestricted survey.
Use task categories and data classifications. A public marketing draft differs from a confidential customer record or a consequential employment recommendation. Security, privacy and business owners determine the permitted boundaries. A convenient consumer interface does not establish that its terms, retention or access are appropriate for company information.
Create an intake that employees can actually use
Give people a short way to request an approved use: task, intended output, source type, audience, frequency and required system action. Name the review owner and explain the interim route. If requests disappear into a committee with no visible status, employees still have the original work to finish and no practical alternative.
| Intake field | Useful example | Avoid collecting |
|---|---|---|
| Task | Explain a current internal procedure | Private prompt transcripts |
| Source category | Employee-approved IT guidance | Copies of restricted records |
| Output | Answer with source and support contact | Vague request to automate everything |
| Action | Read only | Assumed authority to change records |
Keep the request distinct from approval. Submission does not authorize connecting data. The responsible owner decides what testing and contracting are needed before use. Provide a documented manual path while that decision is pending.
Illustrative editorial photograph, not a customer result.
Offer a specific approved alternative
An announcement saying use our approved AI is not sufficient if employees cannot discover what it may do. Explain supported task types, permitted sources, known limitations and who handles questions. If the approved tool cannot perform the requested work, say so and route the gap rather than encouraging people to pretend their task fits.
Pilot one high-demand, bounded use. A current-guide assistant may help with repeated IT questions, but it should not become an all-purpose destination for confidential documents. Test the audience, evidence and failure handling for that specific use. Reuse the governance method, not unrestricted access by association.
Measure demand and risk separately
Track requested uses, decision time, approved-task completion, unresolved requests and policy questions. These tell you whether the approved route is usable. Security incidents and prohibited data transfers need their own handling and cannot be inferred from the number of survey responses. A reduction in reported usage may mean people stopped reporting, not that risk disappeared.
Use proportionate controls under your existing security and employment policies. Monitoring decisions need authorized review and appropriate transparency. Do not introduce invasive employee surveillance as a substitute for understanding a broken work process. Where serious exposure is suspected, use the established incident route rather than an editorial worksheet.
Make policy executable
Give the employee concrete examples of allowed, held and prohibited tasks, with a current source and contact. Test whether people can correctly classify a few synthetic scenarios. Review ambiguous cases with the policy owner. A policy is useful when employees can apply it, not just acknowledge reading it.
The NIST AI RMF offers voluntary risk-management context; this intake is our practical suggested approach, not legal advice. Use the Company AI Source Register to prepare one permitted source. Request a focused demo around a repeat question employees already ask. SimplSolutions can help scope a useful approved route without claiming one tool resolves every AI use.
Put this to work this week
Interview one team about a repeated task without collecting private prompts. Record the approved path, where it stalls and the requested output. Give the request a review owner and visible status. Offer a manual route while permission is pending. In the next review, inspect unresolved demand as well as adoption. Pair this with the vendor evidence checklist before promising employees an alternative you have not evaluated.
