Technology is accelerating decisions across organisations, yet accountability has not kept pace. That tension is where modern governance now lives.
Governance Drift happens when complexity outpaces institutional judgement. The instinctive response is more process. More dashboards. More reporting. But governance has never been only about process. It rests on judgement, and on the curiosity to question what does not immediately make sense.
Technology can analyse at a scale no board can match.
But scale is not accountability.
An algorithm can recommend. It cannot be held to account.
This is where human judgement becomes irreplaceable, and it places a new demand on leadership. AI literacy is no longer optional at board level. Not because boards need to build systems, but because they remain accountable for what those systems do.
The most important moments in a boardroom rarely appear on the agenda. They live in the question that follows the answer, the instinct that something does not quite add up, the willingness to stay curious when the room is ready to move on.
As AI moves decisions earlier, faster, and further from direct human view, the board’s responsibility does not diminish.
Someone still has to answer for the consequences those systems create.
Accountability remains exactly where it has always been.
As organisations become more technologically complex, the board’s capacity for independent and curious thinking matters more, not less.
The question is no longer whether the board understands the technology. It is whether it is still making the decisions, or whether the decisions have already been made.
The next post explores what happens when a board trusts a clean number more than its own inquiry.
