The AI Governance Readiness Diagnostic

One honest picture of where the board stands

A structured, board-level diagnostic that surfaces what your organisation is actually doing with AI, and where the governance has not caught up. It works across five assessment areas — deployment visibility, accountability, data, vendor exposure, and decision rights — producing a single honest picture of where the board stands.

One assessment area works differently from the other four. Deployment visibility is completed independently by the board and by management, before either group sees the other's answers. The gap between the two readings is, deliberately, the most important number the diagnostic produces — the CEO-names-two, CTO-names-nine problem, made measurable.

The diagnostic answers one question: where do we stand? It is the instrument a board reaches for first, before it knows which governance work it needs to do. Where it surfaces a weak area, it points to the instrument in the range that equips the board to close the gap.

Use it by sending the deployment-visibility area to management to complete independently, scoring every item before any discussion, and then agreeing the exposure ratings together on the Profile tab.

Five assessment areas, one readiness profile

• A 25-item readiness questionnaire across five assessment areas, scored on a four-stage maturity scale
• The board-versus-management gap mechanic on deployment visibility
• A workbook that averages each area, names its stage, calculates the gap, and flags where to start
• Defined material-exposure ratings, so every director judges exposure the same way
• A facilitation note for the chair, and an interpretation guide that sequences what to fix first

The moments that call for this diagnostic

Built for the directors who raise the question

Written for the Chair or Senior Independent Director who needs to get AI onto the agenda with a real instrument behind it. It also serves audit and risk committee members who own the exposure, and the newer director who sees the gap clearly because they have not yet absorbed the board's assumptions about it.

A gap you can see

You'll turn a vague unease about AI into a specific, evidenced governance question the board can act on. The board-versus-management visibility gap becomes a number, you'll know which weak area to address first and which instrument closes it, and the conversation stays on missing structures.