The rise of the “Chief Question Officer.” The CQO thesis reframes human value in the AI era around judgment rather than execution. As AI commoditizes the doing, humans become valuable for knowing what to ask, why it matters, and whether the answer is actually right. But this framework deserves deeper scrutiny.
Asking good questions is not an abstract skill. It emerges from years of execution experience that builds intuition about what is possible, what has been tried, and where real constraints lie. CQOs without execution backgrounds may ask naive questions that waste AI cycles.
Evaluation Demands Tacit Knowledge
Verifying whether AI succeeded requires the same tacit knowledge AI supposedly unlocked. A CQO reviewing AI-generated code, strategy, or designneeds enough hands-on experience to recognize subtle failures that pass surface-level inspection.
The Judgment Paradox
If everyone becomes a CQO directing AI agents, the scarce resource becomes judgment quality. But judgment develops through feedback loops from execution. Removing humans from execution may atrophy the very capability that makes CQOs valuable.
Power Law of Question Quality
Not all questions are equal. The gap between a mediocre prompt and an exceptional one may produce 100x difference in output value, concentrating returns among those with superior framing ability.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
