Chris Brown
Head of Client Delivery · Published October 2026 · 4 minute read
30+ years in financial services, with SMF-level governance experience across client assets, regulatory governance and operational risk.
TL;DR
Boards don't need more pages, they need confidence. The best governance conversations start with one question: what keeps you awake at night? Answering it well means moving from manual reporting to connected, evidence-based insight.
In this article
Over the years I've presented governance, risk and CASS reporting to Boards, Executive Committees and senior leaders. I've been asked hundreds of questions.
One of the best was also one of the simplest:
“What keeps you awake at night?”
It wasn’t:
It was just: what keeps you awake at night?
That one question forced the conversation away from activity and towards risk. In my experience, that's where the best governance discussions happen.
Most Board reporting is built around things that are easy to count. Open actions, audit findings, completed reviews and the length of the pack all give a sense of motion. None of them tell a Board where the real exposure sits.
A long list of closed actions can sit alongside a risk that nobody has properly owned. A short Board pack can hide the one issue that should have been escalated three months ago.
When reporting measures activity, Board challenge tends to focus on activity too.
Boards don't need operational detail. They need confidence that:
Risks are understood.
The firm knows what could go wrong, how likely it is and what it would mean for clients and the business.
Ownership is clear.
Every risk, issue and action has a named owner who is accountable for it.
Issues are being addressed.
Problems are identified, logged and acted on rather than parked.
Remediation is working.
Fixes are tested, not just completed, so the Board can see that the underlying issue has actually gone away.
Challenge is taking place.
First and second line oversight is active and visible, not a box ticked once a year.
Decisions are informed by evidence.
When the Board decides something, it can point to the data and assurance behind it.
The question “What keeps you awake at night?” gets to all six. It invites the presenter to name the risk, explain who owns it and say whether the response is working.
For many organisations, producing this kind of insight is still highly manual.
I've spent years reviewing reports built from spreadsheets, PowerPoint packs and multiple data sources stitched together before each meeting. That approach has three costs.
01
It takes time.
Teams spend days compiling information instead of analysing it.
02
It introduces risk.
Every manual copy, paste and reconciliation is a chance for something to be missed, mis-stated or out of date.
03
It delays meaningful discussion.
By the time the pack reaches the Board, the most useful conversation is often about data that is already weeks old.
The result is a governance process that works hard at producing information but struggles to produce understanding.
Technology can help organisations shift the conversation from producing governance information to understanding it.
When governance activities, actions, audits, risks and reporting live in one connected framework, the picture a Board sees is built from the same live data the business is managing day to day. Ownership is recorded at source. Remediation status updates as work progresses. Links between an audit finding, the risk it relates to and the actions raised in response can be seen rather than reconstructed.
That's where solutions such as Ruleguard can play an important role, giving firms the connected view they need so that time before a Board meeting is spent thinking, not compiling.
Great governance isn't measured by the volume of reporting. It's measured by the quality of insight and the confidence it gives decision makers.
Try this test
The next time you prepare a Board pack, ask yourself:
If a Board member asked you what keeps you awake at night, could your reporting show them the answer?
Let's change that
If not, the pack is telling the Board how busy you are, not how safe you are.
See how a connected view of risk, actions and audits can change your next Board conversation.
Book a discovery call