Independent Director — Audit, Conduct and Value Agenda (Water and Environment)

Keeping conduct and control on the board's table

Conduct and control matters have a way of fading from view. A concern is raised, an investigation starts, a remedy is proposed, and somewhere between the committee that heard it and the board that should know, it stops moving. In an essential service such as water and the environment, where public trust and regulatory standing sit close to the core, that drift is costly. The Independent Director's job is to make it impossible.

This is an oversight role, not a management one. The director helps agree how conduct and control matters are handled, including what is held locally, and defines the evidence directors will use to oversee investment, capacity and control. Commitments inherited from earlier boards come under the director's review, and any that would land cost or risk on people who never accepted it are challenged. They test investment cases for uptake, dependencies and downside. And they oversee how matters reach the board, helping directors and operating leaders settle disagreements before money is spent.

What distinguishes good oversight of conduct is persistence rather than severity. A director who asks once is useful; one who asks again at the next meeting, and the one after, until the matter closes, changes how an organisation behaves. Culture reset experience matters for this reason: the director will need to show leaders that raising a concern leads somewhere, and that closing one properly is valued.

A director patient enough to ask again

Boards you have sat on should have governed organisations with $725 million or more in revenue, 3,500 or more people and five or more countries. Experience of culture reset, integration and professionalisation will count most. Conduct oversight puts governance ethics first, at level 4; risk judgement, entity governance and handling the board and its stakeholders follow at level 3. You have carried a culture reset that changed how both the directors and the front-line teams behaved. You have refused to let an exception continue until someone accepted what it cost. Ending a commitment early in your term would count, in your eyes, as a win, and you can defend that with evidence. And you have the patience to ask the same question at three successive meetings.

A year in which every matter has a destination

The first ninety days should give the board an agreed reporting line for conduct and control matters, with thresholds that make escalation mandatory rather than optional. Around month nine each escalated matter should be reviewed in committee, with owners and resolution dates challenged where they slip. At month 12 the directors should evaluate the whole oversight cycle and agree refinements for the following year.

Four meetings, each a test of persistence

You will speak first with the Board of Directors, privately and by video, in week 1. Week 3 brings the Risk Committee Chair and a look at how conduct and control matters are tracked to closure. In week 5 you meet, in person, executives who each run a separate function, and in week 7 the board as a whole. Expect our feedback in writing no later than four working days after each stage.