Thinking Board® brings 20 years of governance expertise into one platform to run board and committee reviews that give you a clear path to improve.
Built on experience with boards
Typical questionnaires tell you little. The questions are often unclear and uninteresting. Real issues aren't surfaced. You don't see where your board is misaligned. The board review rarely inspires meaningful change.
Thinking Board® questions are different — and make a difference.
Without the right questions, you don't know what the score means. And predictable questions don't prompt comments.
Without questions that help you think and learn, it's uninspiring. It makes the review a process to be gone through.
Scores that don't tell you about the underlying problem don't help much. Results that can't be actioned aren't helpful.
Interview-based reviews take weeks and significant budget. Most boards can't justify it annually.
The unique question structure in Thinking Board® makes all the difference.
Our clients tell us they are surprised at how much insight they get. So they know what the problem is and can find practical solutions.
See the full walkthrough →
The language is simple and short. And the issues we ask you to think about are about how boards actually work.
Respondents find our questions thought-provoking. It encourages comments and feels engaging.
You know what is driving the score and the frequency of responses helps you prioritise actions.
Structured around the Independent Audit Model of Board Effectiveness — based on 20 years' experience and more than 1,000 board reviews.
We offer deep-dives across particular themes, committees, individual directors and entity-level reviews for subsidiary boards.
Respondents consider specific, thought-provoking angles before scoring — all highlighting best practice. That means more considered answers and richer, qualitative insight.
Responses are aggregated automatically. No manual collation, no human error. Individual responses are never attributable.
See where board members agree — and where perspectives diverge. Misalignment is often where the most important conversations begin.
Track performance over time. Compare results year-on-year to measure progress. Spot emerging issues before they become problems.
Whether you're running your first governance review or making it an annual process, there's a tier designed for where you are.
For organisations taking a structured approach to board effectiveness for the first time. Or for that quick annual review.
For boards that want to understand not just overall effectiveness, but their ability to navigate specific industry issues and challenges.
All the core Thinking Board® features and more: extensive deep-dive questionnaires plus defined hours with a consultant to interpret results and plan actions.
Looking for something more?
Our sister company Independent Audit Limited has been advising boards for over 20 years. Visit independentaudit.com →
So if you need an external board effectiveness review there are two options:
This combines in-depth Thinking Board® questionnaires with an independent report from our board effectiveness specialists.
This is a comprehensive independent review combining a short questionnaire, interviews, paper review and meeting observations.
Our reports bring benchmarked insight from our many board reviews and practical suggestions and a plan to deliver insight. We don't just walk away at the end — we engage with the Chair, then the wider Board and stay close to the Company Secretary throughout.
For when you need to look at effectiveness across a Group, we offer a "complex group" version of Thinking Board®. Our clients like the ease and insight it provides. Enquire →
For simple self-assessments for each Director, use Thinking Board® ULTIMATE. For a full 360-degree style review, we provide support from an Independent Audit Consultant. Enquire →
Thinking Board® has questionnaires developed specifically for pension trust boards, investment trust boards and charities. Enquire →
We offer specialist questionnaires to help board committees meet their oversight responsibilities. Enquire →
Your board is ticking along — but wants a fresh look at how well it's working, and a quick annual update. Thinking Board® gives you a rigorous annual review without the cost or time of a full external evaluation.
It's the first time the board is assessing its effectiveness. It wants a low-cost introduction to get the discussion going before moving on to a deeper review.
Governance often lags behind growth. Thinking Board® helps boards catch up — identifying gaps, building good habits, and giving founders and NEDs a shared, honest view of where the board stands.
Assess governance quality across your portfolio. Use Thinking Board® to establish consistent standards, identify risk, and demonstrate governance best practice to co-investors and regulators.
Thinking Board® can also be used by organisations preparing for a transaction, public bodies strengthening accountability, sports governing bodies responding to funding agencies, and companies building a track record of governance for a future listing. And in many other cases where board governance matters.
Since 2002, Independent Audit has conducted board effectiveness reviews for listed companies, regulated financial institutions, public bodies, pension trusts and private businesses and others across the UK and internationally.
The questions reflect two decades of real boardroom experience and focus on the things that really matter, not just compliance.
I was surprised how the Thinking Board questions meant I had to think! I got a lot more from completing the questionnaire than I was expecting.
We were surprised at the richness of the picture that emerged from a questionnaire.
I was relieved when the set-up and reporting was so easy. The review took very little of my time.
Click any card to read the full story.
A listed company wanted a fresh approach for its annual internal board review. Its past approach was getting tired and repetitive. And they wanted a time-saving solution.
Read the full story →The Company Secretary used Thinking Board® Essentials as a quick and low-cost option. It covered the main factors affecting board effectiveness — they liked its structure around Independent Audit’s Model.
The Thinking Board® Essentials questions made it thought-provoking. And it needed little time from the CoSec team: set up was easy and the automated report was ready for the board pack.
After looking at just the Board itself, the Board was keen to look at board committee effectiveness. But the solution had to avoid simply the same questions for each committee — they wanted to look at specific committee oversight responsibilities. At the same time, the reviews could not be too detailed because time was short.
Read the full story →Using Thinking Board® Extra, the Board looked at effectiveness across the Board itself and its committees. Each questionnaire was specific to each committee plus some consistent questions across common issues. And the questions captured Independent Audit’s expert knowledge across the technical demands on each committee. All covered by 12 questions — but with a question structure designed to give a lot of insight by highlighting the angles to think about.
The automated reports were ready for each committee. The questionnaires were short but specific enough to make the findings useful for a good committee discussion. A lot of expertise was obtained through quick and low-cost questionnaires.
A board was coming to a board effectiveness review for the first time. It needed to respond to a new regulatory requirement requiring companies to undertake an annual board effectiveness review. For its first year it wanted a simple approach which would help the directors get used to a board review and was not too demanding or costly. At the same time, it needed to cover the main aspects of board effectiveness and be from experts, not just an in-house questionnaire.
Read the full story →The Board used Thinking Board® Essentials to cover the ground across Independent Audit’s Model of Board Effectiveness. The questions were all ready-to-go and did not need to be changed for local specifics — they were all about the main principles of a board’s effectiveness.
It took just a few minutes from the Company Secretary at the set up stage. And the automated report to the Board did not need any work — although it helped that the Company Secretary was able to add in a few comments as it was in Word.
After a few years of high-level internal reviews, the Board wanted a more in-depth board effectiveness review — but without the cost and time needed for an externally facilitated review. And it wanted in-depth reviews across the board and the board committees. Some directors also suggested a technology-focused review looking at how the Board was addressing AI, cyber risk and transformation. But the Company Secretary was worried that such detailed reviews would create a lot of work.
Read the full story →Using Thinking Board® Ultimate, the Board quickly obtained thought-provoking questionnaires which captured Independent Audit’s deep knowledge and experience. The process was quick with a fast set up and reports generated by Thinking Board® with a clear layout in Word. An Independent Audit Consultant gave some analytical guidance to help interpret the results.
The question structure made a longer questionnaire more interesting for the directors and their engagement resulted in a lot more comments and thoughtful responses. Most of all it gave a lot of insight into what was behind the numerical score. So the Company Secretary — together with our Consultant — could focus on the main messages to go into the board report, supported by the reports from Thinking Board®. The Board was surprised at how much practical insight resulted from a questionnaire.
The Board knew that this year it needed to undertake an externally-facilitated board effectiveness review. But it was not ready for an interview-based review — and did not want to incur a big cost.
Read the full story →The Board decided to combine using Thinking Board® Ultimate for the Board and main committees, combined with consulting expertise and a report from Independent Audit Limited. They also asked the Consultants to observe a board meeting. This combined to achieve a review in line with corporate governance standards but at half the cost of a full review.
The question structure meant that the questionnaires gave the consultants more than enough insight to provide an independent third-party expert report to the Board — and to each committee. And that was complemented by observations of the meetings by an experienced Independent Audit board reviewer.
Book a 30-minute demo and we'll walk you through the platform, explain how the methodology works, and help you think through what a review would look like for your organisation.
No commitment. No hard sell. Just a straightforward conversation.
