Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly why sensible companies have discretionary budgets at every level, ideally including individual employees. Below a certain threshold, it costs more to review than to just trust that people are asking for a reason; as long as there are controls and records in place to catch potential abuse or mistakes (e.g. paying for the same thing multiple times), approval requirements should be proportional to amount…
Ofc you can buy it from the tiny discretionary budget. But to get to officially use it you will still have to get approval from IT, a process that will make the purchase shenanigans pale in comparison. So every department builds up a hidden account and 'shadow IT'...
And atop each 'shadow IT' dept, is a 'shadow CIO'.