For those carrying significant organisational responsibility.
Ahqenza works with Boards, senior leaders and the professionals responsible for some of an organisation's most consequential decisions.
They come to us from different positions and with different questions: Board effectiveness, sensitive investigations, leadership capability, difficult executive decisions or conversations that need an experienced external perspective.
The situations differ.
What connects them is complexity, consequence and the need for judgement they can trust.
Boards, Chairs & Non-Executive Directors
When responsibility ultimately sits with the Board.
Ahqenza works with Boards, Chairs, Board Committees and Non-Executive Directors seeking an independent perspective on effectiveness, governance, accountability and significant organisational matters.
The existence of governance structures does not, by itself, demonstrate that governance is working well. The more revealing question is how those arrangements operate in practice.
We may be brought in when
- A Board wants an independent assessment of its effectiveness.
- A Chair wants to understand whether Board dynamics are supporting effective challenge and decision-making.
- A Committee wants an objective review of its effectiveness, remit or relationship with the wider Board.
- Governance arrangements look appropriate on paper, but there are questions about how they operate in practice.
- The organisation is approaching a significant decision, transition or period of scrutiny.
- A Board or Committee requires independent examination of a sensitive matter.
Relevant Ahqenza services
CEOs & Executive Teams
When another internal conversation is unlikely to be enough.
Ahqenza works with CEOs and Executive Teams where an experienced external perspective can help create the conditions for more candid discussion, constructive challenge and clearer decisions.
Our role is not to take the decision away from the people responsible for making it.
It is to help them have the conversation required to make it well.
We may be brought in when
- An Executive Team has reached an impasse.
- Strategic priorities or perspectives are competing.
- An important issue is being discussed around the room rather than in it.
- Relationships or team dynamics are affecting decision-making.
- A new or changing Executive Team needs to establish how it will work together.
- The CEO wants an independent facilitator who can challenge the room without becoming part of its politics.
Relevant Ahqenza services
Chief People Officers, HR Directors & Employee Relations Leaders
When a sensitive people matter requires independence.
Through Resolve, Ahqenza’s independent investigations practice, we work with Chief People Officers, HR Directors, Heads of Employee Relations, Employee Relations leaders and senior People teams on independent workplace and executive investigations and reviews.
The focus is on establishing what happened through careful fact-finding, fair process, rigorous analysis of the available evidence and clear, defensible conclusions.
We may be brought in when
- The allegations are serious, sensitive or complex.
- The matter involves a senior leader or executive.
- There are competing accounts or significant evidence to assess.
- Internal independence may reasonably be questioned.
- Confidence in the fairness of the process is particularly important.
- The matter may have wider implications for culture, conduct, governance or organisational risk.
- The findings may need to withstand internal, legal, regulatory or external scrutiny.
Beyond individual matters, Ahqenza can also help People and Employee Relations leaders strengthen internal investigation capability and difficult-conversation skills.
Relevant Ahqenza services
General Counsel & Legal Teams
When the process and its conclusions need to withstand scrutiny.
Through Resolve, we undertake independent investigations and reviews with clear scope, disciplined evidence gathering and analysis, appropriate procedural fairness and findings that can be explained and supported.
We can work directly with the organisation or alongside internal and external legal advisers, with responsibilities, reporting arrangements and professional boundaries established clearly at the outset.
We may be brought in when
- A General Counsel requires an investigator independent of the business.
- The subject of an allegation is a senior executive or other senior individual.
- A Board or Board Committee has commissioned the investigation.
- The facts are contested or evidentially complex.
- The organisation requires independent fact-finding alongside legal advice.
- Legal, regulatory or reputational consequences may follow.
- Confidence in the independence and defensibility of the process is critical.
Relevant Ahqenza services
L&D, Talent & Leadership Development Leaders
When the leaders you are developing will soon carry greater responsibility.
Leadership development is ultimately an investment in how people will perform when responsibility, ambiguity and scrutiny increase.
For L&D, Talent and People leaders, the challenge is not simply finding engaging development. It is creating learning that is credible with senior audiences, relevant to the realities of organisational life and capable of translating into stronger leadership practice.
Ahqenza is also an Institute Approved Provider, providing independent professional recognition of the standards underpinning its learning and development provision.
Where development falls within the scope of the relevant Institute approval, participants may also have access to associated professional recognition and benefits. Full details are set out on our Board & Leadership Development page.
We may be brought in when
- The organisation is strengthening its succession pipeline.
- Senior leaders are preparing for executive responsibility.
- High-potential talent needs to make the transition from functional expertise to enterprise leadership.
- Technical experts need to develop broader leadership capability.
- Leaders need greater confidence operating with Boards and senior stakeholders.
- A leadership population needs stronger judgement, challenge or influencing capability.
- Significant organisational change requires leaders to operate differently.
- An organisation wants externally recognised standards behind its leadership development provision.
Relevant Ahqenza services
Regulated & Highly Scrutinised Organisations
When decisions may eventually need to be explained to someone outside the room.
Decisions do not simply need to make sense internally. The evidence, governance, process and rationale behind them may eventually need to withstand external examination.
Ahqenza's perspective has been shaped by more than two decades across financial services, professional services and other high-accountability environments, including audit, governance and regulatory work. Amna currently serves on the ICAEW Audit Registration Committee.
We may be particularly relevant where there is
- Regulatory scrutiny or significant external accountability.
- Complex governance or assurance requirements.
- A sensitive conduct or leadership matter.
- High-value or high-risk organisational transformation.
- Significant organisational change.
- Senior leadership accountability.
- A decision requiring a clear and defensible rationale.
The objective is not to create more process.
It is to strengthen confidence that the organisation understands what it knows, what it does not know, what it has considered and why it has decided to act.
Relevant Ahqenza services
Professional Services & Law Firms
When experienced professionals need an equally credible person in the room.
Ahqenza works with professional services firms, partnerships and their senior leaders across leadership development, executive and partner facilitation, governance and independent reviews.
Amna's background as a Fellow Chartered Accountant, former auditor, executive leader, regulator and educator allows her to work with technically sophisticated audiences without reducing complex organisational questions to generic leadership frameworks.
We may be brought in for
- Partner and senior leadership development.
- Executive and partner-team facilitation.
- Leadership through growth, transition or organisational change.
- Governance or effectiveness reviews.
- Difficult strategic conversations.
- Executive education and specialist leadership programmes.
Working alongside law firms
Ahqenza can also work alongside law firms and external counsel where a client matter requires independent investigative, governance or organisational capability in addition to legal advice.
The legal adviser remains responsible for legal advice. Ahqenza provides the agreed independent specialist capability, with scope, roles and reporting arrangements established clearly from the outset.
Event, Conference & Executive Education Leaders
When the room needs more than another leadership speech.
The decision to bring in an external speaker is not simply a decision about content.
It is a decision about the conversation an organisation wants to create.
Ahqenza works with conference organisers, professional bodies, organisations, business schools and executive education providers looking for a speaker or facilitator who combines professional credibility with ideas capable of challenging a senior audience.
For business schools, professional bodies and executive education providers, Amna can also contribute as executive faculty across leadership, governance, judgement, finance, transformation, negotiation and influence.
Sectors we support
Ahqenza works with organisations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, from growing businesses to large and complex organisations.
We support clients operating in highly regulated and sensitive environments, including:
- Financial services
- Professional services
- Healthcare and NHS organisations
- Technology
- Education
- Retail and consumer
- Property and real estate
- Charities and not-for-profit organisations
- The wider public sector
Our approach is tailored to each organisation’s operating environment, its governance requirements and the nature and sensitivity of the matter.
The situations differ. The standard does not.
The clients we are best placed to help are dealing with situations that matter, where the answer is not entirely obvious and the consequences may extend beyond one function.
They value evidence over assumption, constructive challenge over comfortable agreement and experienced judgement that helps them understand not only what is happening, but what needs to happen next.
Talk to us in confidence.
We aim to respond to enquiries within one business day.
Discuss your situation