Information technology is disrupting colleges and universities, forcing them to reevaluate their missions, methods, and business models. So, why aren't IT departments, the home base in higher education for those who specialize in the application of technology, more central to the conversation? The answer seems to lie, at least in part, in the notoriously poor relationships between those in IT organizations and their consumers. The authors, consultants to technology leaders in numerous higher education institutions and commercial enterprises, have noticed a recurring pattern of dysfunction in the relationships between IT people and those in the rest of the institution. There is a problem with the human interface. This article explores how the differences between IT people and others in the university setting undermines their ability to collaborate, and threatens the ability to adapt to the changing landscape of higher education. The authors coined a term--"contraxiom," for contrasting axioms, which they define as a matched pair of contrasting axioms that give rise to different worldviews. In this article, they examine three contraxioms--work, knowing, and language--that that they see as the most common obstacles for information technology in higher education.