Governance is not a morally neutral activity

A report from our first monthly webinar of 2026

In a world that feels increasingly polarised, overstretched and uncertain, the role of boards in public purpose organisations has never mattered more. That was the shared starting point for GGi’s first webinar of 2026, Governance is not a morally neutral activity, chaired by GGi partner and principal consultant Aidan Rave.

The session explored a powerful idea: governance is not simply a technical system of compliance and controls, but an exercise of judgement, courage and moral leadership.

Will Godfrey, former chief executive of Bath and North East Somerset Council, opened the discussion with a local government perspective shaped by decades of working across different political contexts. His central argument was that the strongest organisations share a clarity of purpose.

Rules may be external, but values must be internal, guiding how leaders behave when the path ahead is contested or uncomfortable. Will described the danger of slipping into transactional governance, where leaders simply follow regulations or focus on what is immediately visible or vote winning. For him, governance is not passive: leaders choose whether to merely execute activity or influence it in the public interest.

Our second guest speaker was Beatrice Fraenkel, an experienced NHS non-executive director and charity trustee, who took the moral argument further. “Governance is about power,” she said, “and power is never, ever morally neutral.” Beatrice highlighted how responsibility operates at several levels: personal, collective and collaborative. She challenged boards to notice how small patterns of behaviour can quietly corrode moral seriousness, recounting a chair instructing members not to ask questions that could not be answered in under a minute “because we’ve got to get through the agenda”.

In her view, organisations are not shaped by the documents boards approve, but by “the values we operationalise”, the pressures leaders refuse to accept, and the courage shown when the room becomes uncomfortable.

GGi CEO Professor Andrew Corbett-Nolan added a practical governance frame, drawing on Judge Mervyn King’s governance code and GGi’s experience of reviewing more than 1,250 organisations. He noted that boards often invest time in two of King’s meaningful outcomes – conformance and performance – but neglect two others: ethical culture and legitimacy, sometimes assuming ethics is implicit and therefore not worth explicit attention.

Andrew warned that this creates real, measurable harm: mistrust, malaise and lost discretionary effort, which become amplified under pressure. He offered four questions boards can apply before major decisions: is it lawful and compliant, is it ethical by the standards of a reasonable outsider, is it defensible with pride if harm occurs, and does it contribute to the greater good?

The Q&A and chat brought these themes to life. Guests reflected on how governance maturity depends on an organisation’s readiness for challenge, and the importance of leaving an evidence trail to show why decisions were made.

Others explored the tension between a purposeful organisation and activism, with calls to anchor decisions in the lived realities of staff, service users and communities. A recurring concern was the ‘narrowing of evidence’ boards receive, and the need to balance dashboards with soft intelligence from frontline experience.

The message was clear: governance is morally serious work. And when the pressure rises, boards must ensure they are not only balancing the books and signing off papers but staying true to the people and communities they exist to serve.

Find out more about GGi’s upcoming webinars on our events pages.