For CEOs, CFOs and board members
The Board Questions
Five questions to ask your CIO or Chief AI Officer before the next board meeting. If they cannot be answered immediately, the organization is not scaling AI. It is accumulating exposure.
- 1
How many AI agents are in production today?
Why it mattersYou cannot govern what you cannot count. Portfolios are usually larger than leadership believes, because agents are built inside SaaS tools, business units and personal accounts.
Red flag"Around…", or a number that only covers the central platform.
- 2
Who is the economic owner of each one?
Why it mattersNot who built it — who answers for it if it does not pay back. Without a named owner, nobody has the authority or the incentive to retire it.
Red flagA team name instead of a person, or simply "IT".
- 3
What does each one cost per month?
Why it mattersUsage-based costs scale silently. The real cost includes integration and the human time spent reviewing output, not only the model bill.
Red flagOnly the vendor invoice total, with no cost per agent or per business unit.
- 4
What business outcome is each one contracted to influence?
Why it mattersEvery agent should exist to move a named metric: cycle time, cost per case, revenue or risk. Efficiency agents and strategic agents deserve different thresholds — but both need one.
Red flag"Productivity" or "innovation", with no metric attached.
- 5
When was that contract last reviewed — and what would make us retire it?
Why it mattersAgents accumulate. Without a review date and a retirement criterion, the portfolio only grows.
Red flagNo review has ever happened, or no agent has ever been retired.
How to use them
Send the questions to your technology leadership in writing and ask for written answers. How long the answers take is often more revealing than the answers themselves.
Governance is not control.
It is clarity.
Get the one-page version for your board
A printable one-page version of the five questions, plus one Executive Brief per month. No sales sequence.