Are you asking the right AI question in the boardroom?
AI is reshaping business faster than many executive boards can act. The instinct, understandably, is to demand answers. But according to Marc Verdonk, Deloitte Netherlands' CTO, the real opportunity starts one step earlier: with the questions themselves. And here supervisory boards have a distinctive role to play: those that get the most from AI are the ones asking the sharpest questions, not simply the loudest.
Verdonk's view is that AI shouldn't sit in a box marked "technology strategy." It should run through every part of how a business sets its direction. Drawing on recent conversations with non-executive board members, including an AI learning journey to London, we reflect on Marc’s key insights. What follows is a short guide to the questions that matter most for supervisory board members.
Move beyond "What is our AI strategy?"
Much of the early boardroom conversation centres on a single question: What is our AI strategy? Non-executive directors rightly challenge management on it, and sometimes challenge its very absence. Yet this framing quietly misdirects attention.
The sharper, more powerful question is: What is the impact of AI on our business strategy?
The difference sounds subtle, but it grows the longer you sit with it. An "AI strategy" tends to be delegated to technologists; it becomes a matter for specialists. The business strategy, by contrast, belongs with the CEO. Reframing the question relocates ownership to where it belongs, and brings AI into the conversations that actually shape the enterprise's direction. What looks like a change of wording is really a shift in accountability, and an opportunity to put AI at the centre of value creation.
"There is no single right pace, and that's a strength."
- Marc Verdonk, CTO Deloitte
There is no universal AI posture, and non-executive directors do well to resist the idea that there should be. Companies sit across a wide spectrum. Some are racing ahead; others, understandably, have more pressing priorities right now. Both positions can be exactly right for the company in question.
At its heart, this makes investment a question of priority: is AI genuinely a top priority for this company right now, or are there more urgent matters that legitimately come first? That answer, in turn, shapes the judgement about pace:
- For those building momentum: How far can a company sit behind the state of the art, while staying confident it can catch up once AI becomes a genuine priority?
- For those leading: How far can you run ahead and turn that lead into advantage, given regulatory uncertainty and risks that are not yet fully understood?
Crucially, the role of the non-executive board memebr is not simply to push harder on AI. Each company has its own maturity, its own context, and therefore its own set of questions worth asking. Sectoral differences matter too: the calculus for a fintech differs sharply from that of a public-sector organisation.
Judgement comes from looking outside in
If the right pace cannot be read from a rulebook, where does good judgement come from? Marc points to the outside-in perspective: gathering signals from the wider environment and from what is happening at other companies. These external signals, not introspection alone, tell a board when to accelerate and when caution serves better. They are also what reveal the moment AI shifts from a lower concern to a genuine top priority.
This is precisely why immersive, peer-based learning matters so much. Experiences such as the AI learning journey to London create exactly these vantage points: they put board members in direct dialogue with peers, expose them to how others are navigating the same questions, and surface signals that are hard to gather from within a single organisation. It is in these settings that the outside-in perspective becomes tangible.
This is also where an interesting challenge, and opportunity, lies. A board member who serves on only one board has fewer natural vantage points from which to draw those signals, an open question that invites further thought.
The takeaway
The central lesson is an encouraging one: better questions unlock better decisions. Effective AI oversight begins not with demanding a strategy, but with understanding AI's impact on the business, honestly assessing whether it is a top priority, calibrating the right pace, and drawing continuously on signals from the outside world.
A final word on priority. That companies sit at different points on the spectrum does not mean AI can be absent from the conversation altogether. Whatever the pace a board ultimately judges to be right, AI belongs on the agenda: the honest question is how high it should sit, not whether it should feature at all. Concluding that AI is simply irrelevant is not a credible position for any board today.
The supervisory board's greatest value lies less in having all the answers than in asking the questions that help management see clearly where AI truly fits, and where it can create the most value.
