Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig outbound.protection.outlook.com. NS
Answer
outbound.protection.outlook.com. 5 NS ns4-36.azure-dns.info.
outbound.protection.outlook.com. 5 NS ns2-36.azure-dns.net.
outbound.protection.outlook.com. 5 NS ns1-36.azure-dns.com.
outbound.protection.outlook.com. 5 NS ns3-36.azure-dns.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0