Financial Fluency 

Technology leaders often operate with multimillion-dollar budgets and find themselves in the C-Suite pitching AI solutions that could be a deciding factor in the company’s future.  

John Twombly wants to make sure those tech leaders know the language of business and understand the impact of what they request.  

John teaches Financial Management for IT Professionals in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program. His goal is to introduce business realities and jargon to tech-minded MSIT students.  

“IT people need to know why business people want them to do certain things," he said. "They need to know what the business needs, and they have to provide the rationale behind what they are asking for.”  

At its core, John’s mission is to help students make sense of the language of business accounting—everything from what’s in a financial statement to the financial concepts that guide a company’s decision-making in the short and long term.  

John has been teaching in the MSIT program for more than two decades. As the role of technology in business has grown, so has his course, from a five-week offering to what is now a 10-week cornerstone class.  

The expanded format allows John to explore topics more deeply and give students a broader, more solid foundation for their future business roles. 

John’s approach is to use personally relevant examples to teach professionally important concepts. Take, for example, cost per unit. John might talk about the investment a new fishing enthusiast makes in gear and travel in pursuit of his new hobby. 

“He goes out and he catches one fish, and he says, ‘The hotel, the transportation, the gas, all the fishing equipment, that one fish costs me $1,500,’” John said. “Now imagine if he caught two fish. I just want them to understand that you can't always accept things at face value.” 

As technology’s role in business has expanded, so has the challenge of teaching these concepts effectively. With AI tools generating quick solutions, traditional case studies have become less effective at prompting deeper analytical thinking, he said. 

[Text Wrapping Break]While John accepts the role AI plays in students’ education these days, he cautions students about leaning too heavily on technology and not focusing enough on what led them to continue their education in the first place.  

“The sad part is that, yes, they might get an answer from AI, but they might not understand whether that's the right answer or the wrong answer,” he said. “They have to understand how to think about it.”  

That deeper level of engagement and willingness to understand sets MSIT students apart, John said. MSIT students end up learning as much, if not more, from their peers as they do from him, he said.  

“The MSIT professors are excellent,” he said, “but the people with whom they interact as fellow students? These are some of the very, very top students out there.”  

That provides practical opportunities and networking benefits as the students near the end of their MSIT journey and start to think about returning to the workforce, John said.  

“The type of people you have in the program, they support one another,” he said. “It's not adversarial. It's not competitive. They're very supportive, and I like that.”