Look in the mirror but then also look beyond it
What does the mirror have to do with oversight? A great deal, as became apparent during the symposium ‘Beyond the Mirror.’ To begin with, every supervisor has biases that cloud their perception of reality, and every supervisor has blind spots. Better supervision therefore benefits from a willingness to critically examine one’s own perspective. Self-reflection, then, says Maarten den Ottolander, an experienced expert in the field of oversight and governance who has trained more than 1,800 board members and supervisors. Den Ottolander describes self-reflection as absolutely essential to recognize unconscious biases, such as groupthink and cognitive dissonance. In his view, anyone lacking that self-awareness is unfit for the profession.
To be able of such self-reflection, a certain degree of integrity is required, adds Rob van Eijbergen, professor of integrity and quality of organizations at the University for Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. ‘Supervisors must take responsibility for examining their own actions,’ states Van Eijbergen. But not only that. They must also muster the courage to explicitly discuss the interactions between them – not only to look in the mirror, but also to hold up the mirror to each other. None of this is easy. The ‘flight into dogmatism,’ in particular, is a major risk to integrity, Van Eijbergen argues. ‘When a supervisory board blindly relies on codes and rules to avoid complex reality, it is in fact acting without integrity. That is why it is important to also look ‘beyond the mirror,’ just as Alice does in Through the Looking-Glass. To actively seek the reality beyond those codes and rules, beyond the biased information that a supervisory board member is usually presented with.
Beyond the mirror: look reality in the eye
That ‘looking beyond the mirror’ was discussed extensively in the two subsequent presentations. AFM Chair Laura van Geest focuses primarily on the question of why so many supervisory board members do not look ‘beyond the mirror’ but instead look away from it. She distinguishes three ways in which board members keep reality at a distance. The first is linguistic blurring: risks are called ‘points of concern,’ structural problems become ‘minor incidents,’ and uncomfortable realities are labelled ‘complex.’
The second way is procrastination. ‘People see or sense that something is amiss, but decide to wait – until after the quarter, until after the audit. Risks, however, do not wait. Undisturbed, they will keep growing.’
Finally, there is the silencing of sensitive topics: friction at the top, a shifting culture, doubts about the strategy. But here, too, looking away does not help. ‘Subjects that are swept under the carpet do not disappear. They sink into the organizational culture and grow larger and more sluggish there.’
Van Geest’s remedy? ‘Linguistic discipline – returning to blunt, honest words. Because when the words are sharp, the conversation usually follows suit.’ A premortem can help: imagine that this went wrong a year from now – why? What should we have seen sooner? And, above all, an open culture, championed by a chairperson who encourages discussion and normalizes doubt. She also advises explicitly assigning the role of ‘contrarian’ to a member, so that criticism becomes a legitimate function rather than a troublesome personality trait.
Monique van Dijken Eeuwijk, partner at law firm MGM Regulatory & Governance, supervisory board member and co-founder of the Trust First Initiative, wonders why control, distrust and even more laws and regulations seem to be the mantra of our times. According to her, we have come to equate control, and with it distrust, with the good, or even the perfect. The pursuit of perfection is often a pursuit of predictability and controllability. We have elevated control to a virtue. Anyone who is in control is considered a successful person. Control is then not neutral, but morally charged. According to Van Dijken Eeuwijk, we have become 'autonomy-shy.' Dashboards, certificates, checklists: as long as the external regulator approves. We have not suppressed reality, but are creating a controllable fiction that, according to her, is an illusion. Mature autonomy actually calls for precisely the opposite – to acknowledge, bear, and embrace dependence. ‘Trust is a prerequisite for daring to take risks, for innovating, and for achieving economic growth. It is a prerequisite for tolerance and for safeguarding our rule of law.’ Because, she argues, without risks, we will never achieve anything that truly matters. Her message, summarized in three words: ‘No trust, no risk, no glory.’
Werner Schouten, director of the Impact Economy Foundation, confirms this analysis based on his own experience as an executive and former radio presenter. ‘If you trust each other, you need far fewer control mechanisms,’ he states. But in corporate practice, there is quite often more trust in processes than in people, he observes. ‘And I find that quite remarkable.’
Top supervisory board member Petri Hofsté also underscores the importance of trust. Hofsté reflects on the balance between control and trust in the boardroom from the perspective of her role as a supervisor at DNB, shortly after the credit crisis. According to her, the reflex after a system failure is invariably the same: ‘More rules, more legislation. But precisely in the financial sector, trust is the actual raw material.’ We bank with institutions not because we know the law that compels them to behave, but because we trust them.’
Let yourself be mirrored: the court jester as a counterforce
The contrarian Van Geest already mentioned – the one who holds up the mirror to others – is the subject of the presentation by the corporate jesters Juri Hoedemakers and Tim de Zeeuw. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the jester was the only one allowed to tell the monarch the unvarnished truth. ‘The court jester shoved the mirror right under the king’s nose,’ as Hoedemakers succinctly puts it. That led to reflection, reflection led to new insights, and new insights led to better decisions. That was true then and remains true today. So, should the ideal supervisor not take a cue from such a court jester? The challenge is to integrate the various roles of the court jester into modern governance.
Unfortunately, in practice, not every supervisor is someone who holds up a mirror to others, observes Baptiest Coopmans, a supervisory board member at a number of large Dutch companies. Coopmans points out that good supervisory board members must, at their core, be able to remain highly independent in their judgment and actions. ‘The question is whether that is even possible in the relatively small Dutch supervisory board world, where we run into each other frequently, and where dependencies inevitably arise.’ He believes that greater breadth and diversity on supervisory boards would make difficult conversations considerably easier.
All too often, the result is what Van Eijbergen calls ‘pluralistic ignorance’: everyone in the boardroom assumes that the others are satisfied and remains silent. Until one person dares to say what they really think. ‘That is when the conversation gets going,’ says Van Eijbergen. As long as no one does that, the group’s average intelligence drops – and the group allows more risks than any individual would on their own.
But how to get that conversation started? Coopmans notes that timely or appropriate intervention is always the challenge. ‘That is complicated not only as a supervisory board member, but also in one’s private life. You are often too fast, too late, or you talk too much yourself. Timing is everything.’
In practice, a small, decisive intervention can be enough. Coopmans cites examples such as a one-on-one conversation with a director outside the meeting, followed by an agreement that the director will raise the topic themselves at a subsequent meeting. Or allowing the discussion of a topic to be postponed but still insisting that it be put back on the agenda as soon as possible.
It is precisely these kinds of interventions that can create a difference. That is why Van Geest hopes that the 200 attendees will ask themselves the next workday: ‘What small inconvenience do we choose today to prevent the major inconvenience tomorrow?’
Den Ottolander concludes with a call to look in the mirror, even if you do not like what you see, to let yourself be reflected and accept that reflection, and to look beyond the mirror to discover a larger reality. Bolstered by trust and integrity, steps can be taken to gain a better understanding of reality.
This article was published in Management Scope 04 2026.