Kate H: It's the second committee meeting after the AGM. The Treasurer presents the monthly financials as usual. In the expenditure section, there's a line item $14,362 in miscellaneous expenses. The budget allocation was 2,000 and there's no explanation.

Kate M: The two new committee members notice it. They look at each other and they look around the table. But nobody says anything. The reports are approved. The meeting moves on.

Six months later, the organisation discovers the money's been spent on something the committee would never have authorised, and the paper trail leads straight back to that meeting.

Kate H: The question that nobody asked cost the organisation a lot of money and it's good standing with a long term sponsor.

Kate M: If that sounds like something you've experienced, you're in exactly the right place. Welcome to The Committee Room.

Kate H: Welcome back to The Committee Room. I'm Kate Hartwig.

Kate M: And I'm Kate McPhee. We help small, time poor, volunteer led committees run better meetings, make better decisions, and build stronger structures and systems with less stress and less mess. Now we do this through our governance health check, through my book, Just a Tick, through Kate's committee companion, and through this weekly podcast where we share tips and tricks learned over decades of working with real people on real committees.

Kate H: We've made all the stupid mistakes in the book just so you don't have to. This is our next episode in our Great People, Great Committee series, and I have to say it's one I've really been looking forward to because this is the episode that sits underneath everything else. You can have the right people in the room, clear job descriptions, well run elections, which we covered in earlier episodes, and still have governance fail completely because nobody in the room is asking the hard questions. Now a little note listeners, this episode is possibly a little bit longer than usual, but that's just because it's so important.

Kate M: Asking questions in a committee meeting is not a sign of ignorance or a sign you haven't done your homework or a sign you're being difficult, which I've been accused of many times. I can't believe that, Katie. Yes. Funny about that. Always, it's because other people at the committee table didn't understand that asking questions is how a committee does its job.

And that's why, Kate, I'm really keen for us to talk about why people don't ask, what they should be asking, how to ask well, and what silence in a committee room is really telling you.

Kate H: And a quick note before we start, this podcast is for general information on best practice governance for small to medium associations. It is not legal advice. Right. Let's get started.

Kate M: So let's start with the question behind the question. If asking is so important, why don't people do it?

Kate H: Well, generally, it's because asking is not the socially comfortable choice. There are real forces that keep people quiet in committee rooms, and I can name four straight off.

Kate M: Go on then.

Kate H: Well, first, feeling underprepared. I probably should have understood this from the papers. If I ask, I'm admitting I didn't do my homework. So you stay quiet and hope somebody else asks.

Kate M: So really, that's a committee member not doing their job properly?

Kate H: Second force, not wanting to look stupid. Well, nobody does, especially when there are people in the room who seem to know more than you. So the new committee member sitting next to a ten year veteran who hasn't said anything, surely if there was a problem, the experienced person would have raised it, which is the third force, deferring to the supposed expert, the accountant on the committee, the lawyer, the long serving member who seems to always be across everything. If they're not asking, well, everything must be fine.

Kate M: And the fourth reason, Kate, that people don't ask hard questions is because they assume someone else has already checked it. Someone on the finance committee, someone who prepared the report, someone would have flagged it if there was a problem.

Kate H: Maybe or everyone else is running the same calculation. Now there's an old fable about four people named everybody, somebody, anybody, and nobody. Something needed checking and everybody was sure that somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but nobody did it. It ended up that everybody blamed somebody when nobody did what anybody could have.

Kate M: I love that. And the punchline is always the same. Nobody asked the question and then things go sideways.

Kate H: All four of those reasons being underprepared, not wanting to look stupid, deferring to the supposed expert or assuming someone else has already checked. They're all completely normal. They're human. But not one of them is good governance. Staying silent when something doesn't add up is still doing something.

It's not neutral. It's choosing not to ask, and that choice has consequences.

Kate M: Kate, what about when committee members don't ask because they don't want the meeting to go overtime or they know that the chair doesn't want any feathers ruffled or because no one ever seems to have any proper answers? The Associations Incorporation Act says committee members have a duty of care. That's not a recommendation. It's a legal responsibility. That means reading the agenda and the reports, paying attention to business, and when something is unclear or doesn't look right, asking about it, not staying silent because you don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

Kate H: Silence in the face of something that doesn't add up is a transfer of responsibility. When nobody asks question, everyone in the room has quietly handed their individual governance obligation to someone else, and the person they've handed it to will probably do exactly the same thing.

Kate M: And that attempt to transfer responsibility has a name: the dreaded groupthink.

Kate H: Groupthink is when the whole room goes along with something because nobody wants to be the one to break ranks and it's one of the most common ways the duty of care fails in practice not through malice, not through negligence, just through the accumulated weight of people choosing the comfortable thing over the necessary thing.

Kate M: And our opening scenario is a perfect example of that. In Just a Tick I talk about this as wilful ignorance. Nobody acting deliberately badly. Nobody's trying to do the wrong thing. They just all assume that someone else was going to ask the question.

Kate H: And $14,000 just walked out the door. Alright. So we've established that asking is necessary and not asking is a governance failure. But what should people really be asking?

Kate M: The baseline questions. The questions that don't belong only to the treasurer or the secretary or the president or the longest serving member. Every committee member should feel comfortable asking these baseline questions.

Kate H: Absolutely, Kate. So let's start with the finances because that's where the most silence tends to happen.

Kate M: Oh, yes. The question I love most, Kate, is is there anything in the financial reports the treasurer would like to draw to our attention? You know, it's a gentle question. It's open. It gives the treasurer space to flag something that they might have been a bit hesitant to raise if they weren't prompted, but it signals to the committee that the committee expects issues to be brought to their attention, not quietly ignored or buried.

Kate H: Some other financial questions: Can you help me understand what's included in that line? Or what drove the variance between actual and budget this month? Are our current assets still greater than our current liabilities? Just remember these are all important questions and anyone can ask them.

Kate M: When you're considering a decision, ask what could go wrong here? That's the risk question, and it should be asked before every significant decision is made, not to obstruct the decision making process, but to make sure the committee has properly considered the downside before committing. You can ask, is this type of expenditure covered by our delegation's register? Register? If it's not, should it be?

Another great question, have we done something like this before? And if so, how did it go?

Kate H: And then there's strategy and accountability. Which of our strategic goals does this relate to? This is one of my favourites. Every activity should connect to the strategic plan and believe me, we're going to be spending some time on planning later in the series. If it doesn't, you need to either find the connection or ask why the organisation is doing it.

Why has this item appeared on the agenda three meetings in a row without a decision? What action was taken on this between last meeting and this one?

Kate M: Now Kate, some people would say that these questions are confrontational.

Kate H: Well I say that it might feel that way but these types of questions aren't confrontational. They're about basic scrutiny. They're the questions the people who prepared the reports should be expecting. The question is the committee doing their work.

Kate M: The accepted research says that for every customer who actually makes a complaint another 20 or so have exactly the same problem, but they say nothing. They just quietly take their business somewhere else. We've all done it. Yet the complaint was actually the valuable thing the business needed to hear. The person who makes the effort to complain is telling the business that they've got a problem.

They're telling the business what needs to be fixed so they don't lose even more customers, and that maps directly onto committee life. The committee member who's bringing a problem to the table, who's saying, this doesn't look right to me, or I think we need to talk about this, is doing the organization a service. They're the ones paying attention. They care. They want the information clarified.

They want the problem sorted, and that deserves celebration, not criticism.

Kate H: It certainly does, Kate. Organizational culture that welcomes problems early fixes them early. The organization that doesn't hear about problems until their crises often doesn't recover from them.

Kate M: So, Kate, let's keep this realistic as we've always promised to do with our podcast. We are dealing with humans here, people who are usually doing this work voluntarily, so there's not a pay packet to make it all easier to manage. Now even when committee members are willing to ask questions, the framing really matters. A question that is asked badly can achieve the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

Kate H: Yeah. Absolutely. Because a question that feels like an accusation invites defensiveness. And in a defensive room, people close down rather than opening up. You get less information, not more, and that's exactly the wrong outcome.

Kate M: Less information and less understanding. The goal of a question asked around the committee table is not to catch anyone out. It's to understand. So let's talk about the reframe. Why did we spend $14,000 on miscellaneous versus can you help me understand what's included in the miscellaneous line this month?

Kate H: Same concern, completely different dynamic. The first version is looking for someone to blame. The second is looking for an explanation which is actually what you need. Why hasn't this been done versus what do we need to do to make progress on the issue? One is backward looking and accusing, the other is forward looking and constructive.

Is that really a good idea versus what's our biggest risk with this approach? And notice that the second version in that last pair actually gets you better information. If someone answers our biggest risk is X, you've learned something. If they get defensive about whether it's a good idea, you haven't learned anything useful at all.

Kate M: One of the most useful ways that I've found to frame a question is this. I might be missing something here. Can you walk me through the thinking? Now that phrase does a lot of things. It signals good faith.

It invites explanation. It doesn't imply fault. And it's hard to take offense at whether you're the newest person in the room or the most experienced. Now here's an example. A committee I know is about to co opt a new member to fill a casual vacancy.

Things were moving quickly. Everyone knew and seemed very happy with the person that was being proposed. And then one committee member said, I might be missing something here. Can someone walk me through whether the constitution allows us to do this by resolution or whether it needs to go to the members? There was a pause, a long awkward pause because nobody had checked.

Turns out, it did need to go to the members. So this committee almost created a new governance problem trying to solve a different one. So, Kate, what should people actively avoid?

Kate H: One of the biggest things to avoid is the rhetorical question that isn't really a question. Surely we're not actually considering this, are we? That's not a question. It's an opinion wearing question shaped clothing. It tends to polarise the room rather than illuminate anything.

If you have a view, state it as a view. When you genuinely want information, ask a genuine question.

Kate M: That's right. You have to ask to understand. So you ask, then you actively listen to the answer. That second part, actively listening, has to be nonnegotiable for the question to be genuine.

Kate H: And a little word on timing because not every question belongs in any moment. A question that derails a discussion that's going somewhere productive or rehashes a decision that's already been properly made isn't governance inquiry.

Kate M: Which usually comes down to intent. Is the question genuinely aimed at understanding or improving the outcome? Or is it aimed at something else, you know, points or pushing a personal agenda?

Kate H: Well, fortunately, a good chair can usually tell the difference and can respond to a disruptive question without dismissing a genuine one. It's an important distinction.

Kate M: Now Kate, let's talk about the quiet meeting, the one where everything's presented and approved and the meeting moves through the agenda without a single question. Every agenda item the chair says, any questions? No. Good. Next.

Kate H: Now too many people think that this is the type of meeting that you should be aiming for. It's so efficient. But I want to challenge the idea that this kind of meeting is either effective or efficient. Because in my experience a meeting where nobody asks anything is not a sign that everything is fine. It's a sign that something is very, very wrong with the culture.

Kate M: Kate, I 100% agree with you. A committee where nobody asks questions is not a well functioning harmonious committee. It's a committee where someone or something has made asking questions feel unsafe.

Kate H: So it's usually quite subtle. A chair who responds to questions with visible impatience.

Kate M: Or just doesn't ever see that person who's had their hand up for five minutes trying to ask their question.

Kate H: Yeah, well they're invisible. A treasurer who takes any query about the finances as a personal criticism, a long serving member whose body language makes clear that they find questions from newer members really annoying, or simply the absence of explicit permission. Nobody's ever told this committee that asking questions is what good committee members do.

Kate M: And if nobody's ever said it, people assume the opposite.

Kate H: They assume silence is the expected behaviour, that the questions are for the experts, that if you don't understand something you figure it out privately or not. The customer service parallel applies perfectly here. For every committee member who raises a concern, several more have the same concern and say nothing. They just quietly disengage, stop contributing, don't renominate.

Kate M: So what should a good chair do about this?

Kate H: Well I think the first thing is to create explicit permission, not once but consistently. Say something like, before we approve these reports, does anyone have questions or anything they'd like clarified? And then wait, actually wait, a real pause, not just a token, no questions, great, moving on before anybody has the chance to respond.

Kate M: And, Kate, I think they need to model the behavior. A chair who asks questions, who says, I'd like to understand this better before I put it to the vote, is telling every person in that room that asking is what good committee members do. It normalizes inquiry. It makes the committee room feel much more comfortable, much safer for every time someone has a question.

Kate H: Kate, I worked with a chair once who made a point of asking at least one carefully worded probing question at every meeting, even when I know damn well she already knew the answer. Her thinking was that the question wasn't for her, it was for everyone else in the committee room. It was showing them what engaged governance looks like, what a committee member doing their job looks like.

Kate M: And it's not hard to make asking questions okay. The chair can say, before we vote, has anyone got a question they haven't asked yet? It doesn't have to be done for every decision, but within a few months of the chair doing this regularly in meetings, I've seen a committee's whole culture shift. Questions become normal. New members ask things the veterans hadn't thought to question in years.

Better information was coming out earlier. Problems were being solved earlier. And very importantly, the committee members were getting along much more comfortably even when they had very different views.

Kate H: I want to finish up with something a little bit different because everything we've talked about today is useful and practical but there's a specific moment I want to talk about, the question that changes the room. You've been in this meeting Kate, there's a topic on the agenda, everyone can see something isn't right or it isn't adding up or it just isn't being said and there's a particular question hanging in the air that nobody is asking, not because they don't know what it is but because it feels too hard to say it out loud.

Kate M: Yes. The question everyone is thinking and nobody is asking, the elephant question.

Kate H: That is right. The elephant in the room. Finally someone asks it and the room shifts. There's often a moment where everyone's holding their breath and then usually visible relief because the thing that was unsayable has now been said and the committee can actually deal with it.

Kate M: Asking questions, this is the the really important point here, Kate. Asking questions isn't trouble making. It's governance. It's the duty of care in action, exactly what we talked about in episode four. The committee member who asks a question nobody else is asking is not causing problems.

They're raising a problem that already exists, and raising it early in a meeting with the whole committee present is infinitely better than it emerging later as a crisis.

Kate H: So what does it do to the culture when somebody asks that question and it's received well?

Kate M: It changes everything. It signals that this is a committee where hard things can be said, where the work of governance is actually happening, where you don't have to dilute or dumb down what you're bringing to the table.

Kate H: And on the other hand, what does it do when somebody asks a hard question and it gets shut down?

Kate M: Well, Well, it tells everybody in the room exactly was not allowed, and the committee nearly always loses that person. You know, probably not immediately, but eventually, the committee member who asked the thing that nobody else was willing to ask and was dismissed or silenced for it rarely asks again.

Kate H: It's like the unhappy customer who took their business elsewhere. So the response to the hard question is as important as the question itself.

Kate M: I think it's more important sometimes. A chair or a president who responds to a difficult question with, that's an important point. Let's make sure we've properly addressed it before we move on, is building the right culture every committee needs. One who responds with impatience or defensiveness is dismantling culture one meeting at a time, and that's really bad.

Kate H: Questions are not the enemy of good meetings. It's the exact opposite. Every committee member has both the right and the responsibility to ask questions. Questions are the evidence that the committee is working, that the governors are working, that you're doing exactly what you were elected to do. So let's bring it all together.

Asking questions is the committee's job. Asking good questions isn't a sign you don't know enough. It's how committee members fulfil their legal duty of care and diligence.

Kate M: The forces that keep people quiet, feeling underprepared, not wanting to look stupid, deferring to the experts, assuming someone else has got it covered, are not good governance. Silence is a transfer of responsibility. And when everyone transfers it to everyone else, groupthink fills the gap.

Kate H: Groupthink is a dreadful track for a committee. You should be showing that you care about the organisation by asking questions. Ask them with genuine curiosity, not with a verdict already in your head. That's what matters. And when the hard question is sitting in the room and nobody's asking it, be the person who does.

That's not trouble making, that's governance. So your challenge this week. At your next committee meeting, ask one question you've been holding back. Just one. You don't need to set the room on fire.

Just ask the thing you noticed and didn't say at the time. See what happens.

Kate M: So, dear listener, to make your life in the committee room a little bit easier, we've put a questions are gold checklist in the show notes. Now it includes some of the most useful questions that we've talked about today, questions that any committee member can have ready. So download that, keep it with your meeting papers, take it to every committee meeting, and start asking some of those questions.

Kate H: Now, speaking of questions, and I am so excited about this, we want yours. If you're dealing with a governance situation you're not sure how to handle or there's a topic you'd love us to cover, we want to hear from you. Use the contact form on the website at thecommitteeroom.com.au. Send us your question and we'll do our best to cover it in a future episode.

Kate M: Remember, no question is too basic. If you're wondering about it, just like customer service, someone else on a committee somewhere is wondering about it too.

Kate H: If today's episode has helped you, remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take two minutes to leave us a review. The show notes and the questions are gold checklist are at thecommitteeroom.com.au. And if you want more information about how either or both of us can work with you, you'll also find those details on the website.

Kate M: Now Kate, next time we're talking about bringing people into your committee properly because there's a world of difference between handing someone a folder and calling it an induction and actually setting a new committee member up to constructively contribute from day one.

Kate H: Until then, I'm Kate Hartwig, Kate one.

Kate M: And I'm Kate McPhee, Kate two, and this has been The Committee Room. Remember,

Kate H: you don't need good luck if you've got good governance.