Why can't the IT guy fix your latest tech problem? Odds are, he's ignorant.

In a recent report of over 500 U.S. business and IT managers conducted by CompTIA – a non-profit IT trade association – 93 percent of respondents said there's a gap between the skill level of their IT staff and where they want that skill level to be. Only 56 percent of respondents said the skills of their staff were "moderately close" to where they need to be.

"There are so many new variables entered into the equation today – cloud computing, mobility, the trend towards bringing your own device, video conferencing," Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA, tells Wired. "When you add those in, there is definitely concern that IT staff is still catching up."

In a sense, this is only what'd you expect. The report points out that it would be "challenging" and even "somewhat troublesome" to find an organization completely content with their IT staff. But the gap is large, and the business managers who responded to the survey put some of the blame on themselves. Rapidly changing technology led the list of factors that contribute the skill gap (46 percent), but a lack of resources for IT skill development (43 percent) and ineffective training for IT staff (39 percent) were not far behind.

In addition, only 15 percent of respondents said they have a formal process in place to identify IT skill gaps. Fifty-six percent said they had no process at all.

With more and more employees bringing their own devices to work, the task confronting an IT department is more complicated than it was just a few years ago. But Herbert says that IT staff should fight like with like. He sees companies using a "hybrid" approach to IT education: In some cases, the company or a partner such as Microsoft or Oracle will educate the staff, but in other cases, the staff will be encouraged to learn on their own.

An IT staff can't wait around for management to identify gaps in their skill sets, find funding, organize training, and so on, Herbert says. Instead, IT must identify the gaps on its own.

Herbert cites Codecademy – a site that gives free coding lessons – as an example of how the employee, rather than his manager, can close the skills gap. With Codecademy, employees can teach themselves JavaScript, rather than waiting for a corporate course.

"The challenge for organizations," Herbert says, "is to make sure that type of initiative brushes off on others."