Independent Director — Audit and Conduct (Logistics and Infrastructure)

The calls an audit and conduct director has to make

Boards receive a great deal of information and much less evidence. Management information tells directors what management believes is happening; evidence is information that has been tested, sourced and reconciled to something a director could check. The two often look identical on a board paper. An independent director focused on audit and conduct spends much of their time deciding which is which.

Those decisions are judgement calls. When a conduct report shows few incidents, is that because conduct is good or because reporting is weak? When an operational metric improves, has the underlying performance changed or the definition? When management presents an inherited commitment as on track, what would a director need to see to believe it? None of these can be settled by asking for more data. They need a director who knows which questions expose the difference, and who will keep asking after the first answer.

This is a non-executive seat: oversight, not management. Reporting to the Board Chair, you will help agree how decisions are made and how much stays in the hands of country managers, and help define what the board should insist on seeing when it oversees capital allocation, operating capacity and internal control. You will question whether inherited commitments deserve to continue, test any proposal that shifts exposure without someone answering for it, and probe value cases for take-up, dependencies and downside. You will keep watch over the leadership arrangements and how issues rise, and help the Board Chair and business heads work through disagreements.

A year that ends in a tested standard

The first ninety days should give the board an agreed evidence standard for audit and conduct matters, kept distinct from management information. Around month nine, audit and conduct reports should have been reviewed against that standard, with gaps challenged and an accountable owner for each. By month 12 the standard should have been tested across a full audit cycle and considered in the board evaluation.

A director whose questions change outcomes

You bring experience from organisations of at least 3,700 people and $660 million in revenue, active in six or more countries. Directors will be interested in your experience of scale-up, platform pivots and professionalisation, each of which changes what management information measures and how reliable it is. Governance ethics is expected at level 4; at level 3, the board wants entity governance, risk judgement, and the handling of boards and stakeholders. Your grasp of logistics and infrastructure services comes from calls that carried your name, and you should be able to describe a well-liked commitment you ended, what persuaded you and what that freed up.

Four stages with the chair, executives and board

The Board Chair sees you twice: first by video, in confidence, during week one, then in week three for a session working through a sample board paper together. Week five takes you to a face-to-face panel drawn from the senior executive team across all functions, and the seventh week to the directors as a whole. We reply in writing within two working days after each stage.