A short apology first: this piece was meant to land the week after the Three Numbers piece. It didn’t. Some weeks, the work in front of you wins over the writing about the work — this was one of them.
The Three Numbers piece established that a working DIAP should be able to produce a completion rate, an integration figure, and outcome evidence — without anyone scrambling to find them. Most organisations can’t produce all three.
That gap usually isn’t visible to the people who could actually close it, because boards and executives approving inclusion plans rarely ask the questions that would surface it. They ask whether the plan looks thorough, whether the budget is reasonable, and whether it aligns with the strategy. All fair questions. None of them tests whether last year’s plan actually worked.
The questions that go missing
Most board sign-off processes for an inclusion plan ask some version of: does this look complete, is the budget justified, does it fit our broader strategy? These are legitimate questions. They’re also the wrong ones to rely on exclusively, because a plan can satisfy every one of them and still deliver nothing measurable the year before.
Here’s what a board should be asking instead, before signing off on FY 26-27 — and what a good answer, versus a bad one, actually sounds like.
“What was our completion rate on last year’s plan, and who’s accountable for this year’s?”
Not “were things worked on” — completion, measured against what was actually committed to.
A bad answer sounds like: “Yes, we’ve been very active this year — lots of great initiatives underway.” Activity language, no number. It’s the sound of a plan that was worked on, not worked through.
A good answer sounds like: “We completed 7 of 10 committed actions. Two are in progress and will land by Q2. One was deprioritised after a leadership change, and here’s why.” Specific, honest about the miss, and attached to a reason rather than a vague promise to do better.
If nobody in the room can answer this without going away to check, that’s the real answer. The plan being presented for approval is operating on faith, not evidence — and the board is about to approve another year of it without knowing that’s what they’re doing.
“How many of our own people know this plan exists, and what it commits us to?”
A plan that lives with one person isn’t organisational capability — it’s one relationship away from starting over.
A bad answer sounds like: “The inclusion lead manages all of that.” Said with confidence, as if a single point of ownership were itself evidence of a functioning system, rather than the risk it actually is.
A good answer sounds like: “It’s referenced in onboarding, it’s a standing item in three team meetings, and here’s roughly what percentage of relevant staff we estimate know it exists.” Even an imperfect estimate here beats total silence — it shows someone has actually tried to measure integration, not just assumed it.
If integration hasn’t been asked about before, this is the year to start. It’s a cheap question to ask and an expensive gap to discover only after the person holding it all together leaves.
“What changed for disabled people last year because of this plan — and how do we know?”
This is the hardest question and the one boards ask least, because it requires the organisation to have set up outcome tracking in advance, not reconstructed it after the fact.
A bad answer sounds like: “We ran the consultation sessions and delivered the training.” True, possibly. Still activity, not outcome — it describes what the organisation did, not what changed for anyone because of it.
A good answer sounds like: “Complaints about physical access dropped 15% after the audit actions landed,” or even a more modest, “We don’t have a clean number yet, but here’s the one outcome metric we’ve started tracking this year specifically so we can answer this properly next time.” The second version isn’t a complete answer — but it’s an honest one, and it shows the gap is being closed rather than ignored.
If the honest answer is “we don’t have that data,” the right response isn’t to let it go — it’s to make outcome tracking a condition of this year’s plan being approved, not a hope for the one after.
Why don’t boards ask these questions?
Not because they don’t care. These questions require boards to hold the plan to a standard of evidence that most plans were never built to produce. It’s much easier to approve a document than to ask whether last year’s version of it actually worked.
There’s also a structural reason: boards typically see the plan once a year, at approval time. They don’t see the quarterly gaps, the missed check-ins, the actions quietly deprioritised along the way. By the time it reaches board level, the plan has already been smoothed into something that reads as complete, whether or not it was delivered.
The pushback you’ll get for asking anyway
If you’re the board member who starts asking these questions, expect some resistance — none of it necessarily hostile, all of it worth naming so it doesn’t derail you.
“We don’t want to put the executive on the spot.” This reframes basic governance accountability as a personal attack. Asking for a completion rate isn’t an ambush; it’s the same standard applied to a financial report or a safety metric. If it feels pointed here specifically, that’s worth noticing, not avoiding.
“I’m sure the team has this handled.” Possibly true. Also, exactly the assumption that lets an unmeasured plan run for years unnoticed. Trust and verification aren’t opposites — asking doesn’t mean you doubt the team, it means you’re doing the job a board exists to do.
“We don’t have time to go into this level of detail.” Fair, if the ask were a full audit. It isn’t. Each of these three questions can be answered in a sentence or two by someone who’s actually tracked the numbers. If it takes longer than that, that’s informative in itself.
What to actually do with this
If you sit on a board or executive team approving an inclusion plan this cycle, ask the three questions above before you approve anything. If the answers aren’t available, don’t treat that as a reason to wave the plan through anyway — make producing those three numbers a named condition of this year’s plan, not a nice-to-have.
If you’re the person bringing the plan to the board, get ahead of this. Walk in with the three numbers already prepared, even if they’re not flattering. A board that has to ask you for the completion rate reads very differently from a board you hand it to unprompted — and a rough, honest number beats a confident non-answer every time.
Over to you
If your board approved an inclusion plan this year without asking any of these three questions, what would happen if they asked next time? Reply or drop it in the comments — I’d like to know whether the gap is that boards aren’t asking, or that the answers genuinely aren’t there yet, even if asked.
Next in the series: why FY 26-27 won’t be different — unless you change something specific.
Work With Me
This is part of the Making Inclusion Work series, written for leaders and practitioners who want their inclusion work to actually stick. If you’re thinking about your next phase of inclusion work — a DIAP, a strategy refresh, an audit, or a governance piece — and you’d like a confidential conversation about where you’re sitting and what would genuinely move you forward, I’d welcome the chat.
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