Assurance vs Reassurance

I have been a member of many Boards (as a non-exec and exec contributor) and the dynamic between reassurance and assurance is one of the most underestimated challenges I have encountered, particularly in the charity sector where I can't recall the topic being openly discussed at any of the board meetings I have attended.

I hear executives complain that the Board gets routinely bogged down in the detail, and I hear Trustees complain that senior managers don't give them enough information to enable effective scrutiny. If this situation resonates with you and your board, consider having an open and honest conversation about the difference between assurance and reassurance. Because it might be the root cause behind this relentless tug-of-war conversation.

What's the difference?

Here's a summary from a fantastic Good Governance Institute blog outlining the difference:

• Assurance provides certainty through evidence and brings confidence that systems are working. With assurance, you have triangulated evidence that what needs to happen is actually happening. You will have seen this evidence in practice or will have received and reviewed reliable sources of information, which is often independent. Your organisation may also have evidence of historic progress in the area in question and outcomes that confirm this.
• Reassurance is often based solely on a track record of success; a lack of contradictory evidence or perhaps because people with a professional background and expertise in the subject area or someone with a strong management personality have told you that something is so, and so it must be true. Reassurance happens when someone tells you all is well, and you believe there’s no need for further checks.

Why does it matter?

It is important for everyone around a board table to be clear about when assurance is required vs when reassurance will suffice. Otherwise there is a real risk of mismatched expectations, leading to the conflict I describe above and a lack of effective scrutiny. In an unpredictable or volatile environment trustees may want more assurance than they have historically requested. Unless they are clear about why they require more data or evidence, senior managers can easily misinterpret their scrutiny as a lack of trust or excessive interference in operational matters.

It is important for the CEO and Chair to regularly review the Board reports and dashboards to make sure that they provide the right balance of assurance and reassurance. Committees can sometimes help to bridge the gap by scrutinising data in more detail as part of the assurance function, then reassuring the full Board that the evidence has been effectively triangulated.

Start the conversation.

Getting the balance right between assurance and reassurance doesn't happen automatically. Don't assume that everyone around the Board table is working to the same assumption or definitions. If your Trustees and senior managers haven't had the assurance vs reassurance conversation yet, make sure you're not sleepwalking into mismatched expectations and compromising effective scrutiny. Check out the Good Governance Institute blog and start the conversation.