Cobit 2019

The worst decisions in any organisation are usually made by the person who will also be judging the outcome.

Think about the last time you saw a project fail inside a company or a school or a government department. Often it was not because the people were incompetent or the idea was stupid. It was because the same person who chose the direction was also in charge of measuring whether it was working, and nobody was surprised when the measurements came back favourable. This is an old problem, and it shows up whenever the people making decisions are also the ones evaluating them. It is why auditors do not work for the company they audit, why judges do not preside over their own cases, and why any decent governance model keeps the people who decide separate from the people who judge. The logic is not distrust. It is just that nobody, however well meaning, can be neutral about their own choices.

In most schools and universities, the IT director both chooses the learning platform and runs it, which means the person who has to admit the tool is not working is the same person who picked it. This is how expensive technology stays in place long after it has stopped delivering value. There is a framework called COBIT that makes this explicit. It separates the role of deciding, directing, and monitoring from the role of planning, building, and running. It is not a cure for bad decisions. It is a structural way of making sure bad decisions get noticed by somebody who is not invested in defending them. Where in your own life have you seen the same person holding the compass and grading the trip?

Last week we looked at voluntary frameworks. This week we look at one of the oldest rules in good governance, which is not letting the same person decide and judge.