Project Governance and the Ladder of Inference: Or, “No Questions? Great — We’re Fine.”
Governance exists to keep projects safe.
Boards, papers, RAG statuses, milestones. The reassuring furniture of delivery. Nothing says “control” quite like a well-formatted update slide with a green dot glowing proudly in the top corner.
But here’s a secret most of us know and rarely say out loud:
Sometimes projects don’t succeed because governance worked, they survive. Why? Because nobody asked enough questions to help them thrive.
The Ladder of Inference is key here. A sneaky cognitive escalator that lets us climb from facts to conclusions faster than you can say “any comments?”
The Ladder of Inference
Something is reported
We notice only the bits that sound nice
We interpret them as proof everything is fine
We conclude the project is healthy
We act accordingly (nod approvingly, approve paper, go for coffee)
The lack of panic confirms the conclusion
Next time — we climb the ladder faster
Congratulations — we’re now wrong, but extremely efficient with it.
A Scenario. Totally fictional.
The slides look professional. Resources look good and the milestone bar is 80% filled in a lovely shade of green. The programme board begins:
Chair: “Any questions?”
Group: silence, polite nodding, perhaps a throat clear.
Chair: “Great, progress report approved!”
Project team leaves thinking: Board is happy.
Board leaves thinking: Team must be on top of it.
Everyone leaves thinking: Success!
Reality, somewhere backstage: a small fire is burning but we’ve agreed not to look.
The governance trap: silence as evidence
The danger isn’t from a lack of skills, the opposite in fact.
But, when no one raises concerns, we infer there aren’t any. When risk logs don’t change, we infer risks are managed. When every update is green, we infer the project is healthy.
In truth, sometimes:
Risks haven’t been raised because the team is firefighting
Issues are unspoken because nobody wants to be the awkward one
Green statuses are chosen because amber invites paperwork
Questions aren’t asked because we want to get back to “fixing it”
And that in my experience is how green becomes less a colour and more a collective coping mechanism.
How to stop climbing the inference ladder two rungs at a time
We don’t fix this by adding more paperwork. (Please, no.)
We fix it by injecting curiosity with a dash of bravery and a teaspoon of humour. Challenge is good, challenge is welcome. And make sure you back it up with data.
Try governance questions like:
“What are we not talking about yet?”
“If this went wrong, where would we first see smoke?”
“What assumption would you lose sleep over?”
“If we had to argue why it isn’t green, what would we say?”
One of my favourites:
“What would surprise us six months from now and how do we avoid it?”
Suddenly silence becomes information, not reassurance.
The goal isn’t blame, it’s clarity
We’re not trying to catch anyone out. We’re trying to stop the room nodding its way into mutual delusion.
Good governance shouldn’t feel like a performance review for grown-ups. It should feel like a team sport where honesty is rewarded and curiosity is normal.
Because the point isn’t to leave a meeting thinking “no one asked anything, perfect!”
It’s to leave thinking “we understand what’s really happening.”
Green should be questioned not just accepted.