Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig department99.com. NS
Answer
department99.com. 5 NS ns-1469.awsdns-55.org.
department99.com. 5 NS ns-1523.awsdns-62.org.
department99.com. 5 NS ns-718.awsdns-25.net.
department99.com. 5 NS ns-987.awsdns-59.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0