What a board and committee review template should include

A board review template should cover four tiers: the full board, each committee, the chair, and individual directors. For the full-board section, use Board Intelligence’s 5 I’s of board effectiveness: individuals, information, infrastructure, impact, and innovation. Give every question a purpose and add a note on what a weak answer looks like, so whoever compiles the results knows what they’re reading. The questions below cover each tier, with a note on what a weak answer looks like.

A board review template does three jobs for the chair and the company secretary:

• It puts the same questions to the board every year, so the chair can see whether scores and themes move.
• It prompts directors to raise concerns they wouldn’t bring up unasked.
• It leaves a written record of what the board said about itself.

No template makes a director candid, and no template interprets its own results. The chair and the directors do both, in the discussion the answers make possible.

Directors rate their boards generously on process. In the Board Value Index, Summer 2026 global edition, 89% of directors described their board’s processes and meetings as efficient. In the same survey, 37% described their board as an essential tool for value creation. Directors can rate their meetings efficient and still doubt what their board adds. Ask them about both. 

For timing, internal versus external reviews, and who runs each stage, read our guide on how to conduct a board evaluation.

Our board reviewers work through five areas: individuals, information, infrastructure, impact, and innovation. Most boards cover the first three well. Impact and innovation get far less attention. When we analysed the 98 board evaluation statements FTSE 100 companies published in their 2023 to 2024 annual reports, we counted 589 references to areas for development. Innovation appeared in none of them. You can read the full analysis in our research on FTSE 100 board evaluation trends.

Cover all five areas and the template tests what the board contributes, as well as how it runs.

• Which skill would you most want in the board’s next appointment, and why?
• When did a director last change their view during a discussion, and what changed it?

A director gives a weak answer when they list every skill on the matrix without naming a priority, or when they can’t recall anyone changing their mind.

Directors in the Board Value Index, Summer 2026 global edition, named information quality as one of their three biggest barriers to decision-making, with 29% citing it.  Self-assessment data gathered by Board Intelligence and the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland, published in the same report, rates 68% of board packs as weak or poor. 

• Which paper in the past year left you without what you needed to decide?
• How often do you go back to management for information after the pack arrives?

A director gives a weak answer when they complain about pack length without naming a single fact that was missing.

Directors who use IQ Insights can check their recollection against the record. IQ Insights summarises each paper and links it to the board’s past discussions. The judgement on quality stays with the director.

• Which decision reached the board too late for directors to change it?
• Before each agenda item, do directors know whether they’re being asked to decide, advise, or note?

A weak answer offers “meetings finish on time” as evidence of good process.

Under impact, directors assess how the board spends its time. In the Board Value Index, Summer 2026 global edition, 41% of directors said their board spends half or more of its meeting time reviewing past performance.

• Roughly what share of last year’s meeting time went on looking forward?
• Name one strategic decision where the board’s input changed the outcome.

A weak answer says the board approved the strategy but can’t point to anything the board changed in it.

• When did the board last ask management what it’s testing that might fail?
• Which outside development, from a competitor, a regulator, or new technology, did the board discuss before management raised it?

A weak answer puts innovation on the agenda only as a risk item.

Each committee oversees something different, so each needs its own questions. Put them to committee members and to the rest of the board. Directors outside a committee see its work through its reports, which makes them well placed to say whether those reports give the board what it needs.

Start with the audit committee. Is the assurance it receives from internal and external audit enough for the board to form a view on whether internal controls are working? When did the committee last challenge the external auditor’s findings, and what happened next?

The risk committee should be able to say which principal risk it spent least time on last year, and whether it chose that. Ask the remuneration committee to show how last year’s pay outcomes followed from performance. For the nomination committee, the question is whether its succession planning goes beyond the next appointment.

Each of those questions asks the committee for evidence.

The chair sets the agenda and decides how much room directors have to disagree, so many of a review’s findings about culture are findings about the chair. In the UK, the senior independent director (SID) leads this part. The SID gathers views from the other directors without the chair present, then discusses them with the chair.

• Does the agenda give the most time to the most consequential decisions?
• Which directors rarely speak, and does the chair bring them in?
• When a director disagrees, does the chair open up the discussion or close it down?
• Does the chair work well with the CEO and still challenge them when needed?

Individual director reviews take two forms, and they answer different questions. In a self-assessment, each director rates their own contribution. In a peer review, each director rates the others. Label each form accurately in the template.

Directors notice things about each other that self-ratings miss, and they will say so when responses are anonymous and someone outside the board’s working relationships collects them. The chair then uses the results in a development conversation with each director.

• Which of my questions this year improved a decision?
• What do I need to learn to contribute more next year?

• Does this director arrive having read the papers, and does it show in their questions?
• What expertise does this director bring that the board would otherwise lack?

Board evaluation questions surface real issues when they ask for a specific example rather than a yes or no. Directors who want to be supportive will answer a closed question with “yes”, so rewrite each closed question to ask for an example.

Keep the full set short and tie each question to an issue this board faces. Directors answer a short survey written for their board with more care than a long generic one.

Collect scores and free text. Scores make year-on-year comparison easy, and free text carries most of the useful detail. Give every scored question a comment box, then spend most of the compilation time on what directors write.

Collect responses anonymously and aggregate them before anyone reads them. Never attribute a comment to a named director. Send findings about the chair to the SID, and findings about an individual director to the chair, before the full board sees the results.

Company secretaries use Board Surveys to run this stage, starting from ready-made templates built by governance experts, automating distribution and reminders, and comparing results over time, across roles, and between forums.

The chair leads the action plan, with support from the company secretary. Give every action an owner and a date. Our guide on how to conduct a board evaluation includes a worked example.

Listed companies that follow the UK Corporate Governance Code describe in their annual report how the review was run, what it found, and what followed. Record findings in a form the board would be comfortable summarising in public.

A template that has run unchanged for three years stops working, because directors learn which answers it expects. A board under strain also needs outside help, because the people answering are the people under review. An external reviewer interviews directors one to one and observes meetings, which brings out issues nobody writes down in a survey.

The 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code (Provision 21) says the chair of a FTSE 350 company should commission an externally facilitated board performance review at least every three years. In the US, the NYSE Listed Company Manual (Section 303A) requires listed companies to provide for an annual board self-evaluation in their governance guidelines, and requires the audit, compensation, and nominating committees to evaluate their own performance each year.

Our facilitated board reviews use the five areas set out above.