AuditBoard Report: The Biggest Productivity Challenge is Unmanaged Culture

80 percent of respondents agree culture is essential to governance, yet ownership is rarely defined.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 12, 2025 /CNW/ -- AuditBoard, the AI-powered global platform for connected risk transforming audit, risk, and compliance, today announced the paradoxical results of a recent survey: while nearly all governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) professionals recognize the importance of organizational culture, it remains virtually unmanaged. While culture is the lens through which every risk, decision, and behavior is expressed, the data found that organizational culture is deeply undermanaged. It's valued but not fully operationalized, recognized but not owned, measured reactively, and addressed in silos instead of systemically.

AuditBoard partnered with Panterra Research to survey over 400 GRC professionals across the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom for its report, 2025 organizational culture and ethics report: Tackle culture risks in the GRC Ecosystem. Key findings include:

• No one owns culture risk… which creates more risk.While everyone values culture, no single function is accountable for managing culture risk. 80 percent of respondents agree organizational culture is essential to governance. But when asked how well it's integrated into enterprise risk management, audit planning, or compliance strategy, most rated their integration as low to moderate. Culture remains a special project, rather than a core risk category, creating gaps, blind spots, and missed opportunities for coordinated action.
  
  
• The health of organizational culture is measured reactively. Despite culture's elevated visibility, most organizations continue to rely on reactive, lagging indicators such as incident reports or employee surveys. These sources are useful for identifying when things have gone wrong, but offer little in the way of foresight. Less than half of organizations reported using any form of real-time behavioral indicators, and few had tools in place to support predictive or forward-looking cultural analysis. Without these capabilities, emerging risks often go undetected, and cultural drift is only noticed after it leads to performance, conduct, or reputational failures.
  
  
• Tools and infrastructure for managing culture risks are lacking. Despite recognizing the importance of culture, most organizations lack the necessary tools, frameworks, and integrated platforms to assess, monitor, and manage culture risk effectively. 37 percent of respondents reported technology or dashboard limitations being one of the biggest barriers their team faces in using behavioral indicators to manage risk. This absence of infrastructure leaves major blind spots and limits the ability to act on cultural insights.

"When organizations treat culture as a check-the-box commodity, it will remain vulnerable to latent risks, slow responses, and declining trust," said Richard Chambers, Senior Advisor, Risk and Audit at AuditBoard. "In contrast, when culture is embedded into GRC strategy through behavioral insight, shared accountability, and proactive infrastructure - it yields strategic value that fosters resilience and integrity."

"Across governance, risk, and compliance functions, there's a growing recognition: culture matters — but also deep uncertainty about what it means and who owns it. This fragmentation is no longer sustainable," said Sandro Boeri, Culture Advocate and Internal Audit Leader. "To move forward, we must dismantle silos and establish a shared language revolving around behavioral risk — something more concrete and auditable than the abstract notion of culture. This shift requires upskilling, cross-functional collaboration, and smart use of technology."

For the full findings and actionable insights, read the report here.

About AuditBoard
AuditBoard's mission is to be the category-defining global platform for connected risk, elevating our customers through innovation. More than 50% of the Fortune 500 trust AuditBoard to transform their audit, risk, and compliance management. AuditBoard is top-rated by customers on G2, Capterra, and Gartner Peer Insights, and was recently ranked for the sixth year in a row as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America by Deloitte.

Contact:
Laura Groshans
[email protected]

SOURCE AuditBoard, Inc