Executive Vocabulary for AI Governance: What Verbs to Use for Controls vs. Assurances in Board Slides

Step 1: Why verbs matter on board slides—controls vs. assurances

Boards do not read for color; they read for control. In AI governance, the verbs you choose signal whether you are describing the risk treatment you have put in place or the evidence that those treatments work. This distinction—controls versus assurances—is foundational and should be visible in every headline, status line, and policy clause.

• Controls are the measures and activities you put in place to manage AI risk. They include policies, processes, technical safeguards, and human oversight routines. Controls change the environment or behavior of systems and teams.
• Assurances are the evidence you provide that those measures are designed appropriately, implemented as intended, operating effectively, and achieving the expected outcomes. Assurances do not change the environment directly; they give confidence about the state of controls and their results.

Boards expect the two to be cleanly separated. When you say “we validated bias mitigation,” the board hears assurance. When you say “we implemented bias mitigation,” the board hears control. Mixing these verbs blurs accountability: executives may think a risk is managed when, in fact, it has only been assessed; or they may assume evidence exists when only a control has been drafted. Clear verb choice shows whether you have acted, measured, or proven.

This language maps closely to the governance expectations embedded in leading frameworks:

• NIST AI RMF distributes expectations across governance and lifecycle functions. Think of:

  • GOV (Govern): setting policies and roles—verbs of establishing and enforcing controls.
  • MAP (Map): scoping and understanding context—verbs of assessing and documenting.
  • MEA (Measure): quantifying behavior and risk—verbs of measuring, validating, verifying.
  • MAN (Manage): treating risk, monitoring, and remediation—verbs of implementing, operationalizing, and improving controls. The RMF implicitly tells you when to use enactment verbs (MAN, GOV) and when to use evidence verbs (MEA).

• ISO/IEC 42001 (AIMS) uses a management-system cadence. Clauses align to the plan–do–check–act cycle.

  • Plan and Do focus on controls: establish, implement, integrate into operations.
  • Check emphasizes assurances: monitor, measure, evaluate, audit.
  • Act bridges both: remediate controls and attest improvements based on evidence.

• ISO 23894 focuses on AI risk management within the ISO 31000 family. It traces risk treatment and monitoring.

  • Risk treatment implies controls verbs: select, implement, and operationalize safeguards.
  • Monitoring, review, and improvement require assurance verbs: verify, validate, audit, and demonstrate performance against objectives.

When your verbs align to these functions, the board can instantly map a statement to the appropriate phase of governance. That mapping supports oversight, budget decisions, and regulatory posture. It also makes cross-referencing easy when internal audit or external assessors test your claims.

Step 2: Verb families with aligned artifacts and metrics

The simplest way to avoid ambiguity is to group verbs into two families—one for building and operating controls, and one for providing assurances. Pair each family with the artifacts and metrics that typically accompany those verbs. That pairing ensures every claim on a slide or policy has a tangible, provable object behind it.

Controls: verbs of enactment and operation

Use these when you describe what you put in place, how you run it, and how you fix it:

• Establish: create formal structures—policies, roles, risk appetite, standards.
• Implement: put a designed control or safeguard into operation for the first time.
• Operationalize: embed the control into routine workflows and tools so it runs consistently.
• Integrate: connect the control with adjacent processes (e.g., SDLC, MLOps, procurement) so it triggers at the right time.
• Configure: set parameters and defaults that determine control behavior (e.g., logging levels, threshold values, human-in-the-loop requirements).
• Enforce: constrain behavior via gates, approvals, or automated checks.
• Monitor: observe control activity and system behavior continuously or at intervals to detect drift and violations.
• Remediate: correct deficiencies, incidents, or nonconformities and prevent recurrence.

Typical artifacts for controls:

• Policies and standards (what must happen)
• SOPs and control runbooks (how it happens)
• Design docs and configuration baselines (how it is set up)
• Playbooks and remediation tickets (how issues are handled)

Measurable objects for controls:

• Coverage: proportion of AI systems or use cases under the control.
• Execution: frequency and timeliness of control activities (e.g., number of model releases gated by review).
• Effectiveness indicators: incident counts, MTTR for remediations, rate of policy exceptions.

Assurances: verbs of evidence and validation

Use these when you describe how you know controls are designed well, operating effectively, and delivering intended outcomes:

• Assess: evaluate design and implementation status against criteria.
• Verify: confirm conformance to specifications or standards (checklists, inspections, peer reviews).
• Validate: confirm the solution achieves intended outcomes in real or representative conditions (performance, fairness, robustness).
• Evidence: furnish artifacts or data points that substantiate claims (logs, reports, metrics).
• Demonstrate: show observable proof through tests, walkthroughs, or dashboards.
• Audit: conduct independent, systematic examinations (internal or external) against a defined scope and criterion.
• Attest: formally assert a conclusion, often by a designated authority or independent third party.
• Assure: provide confidence through a structured assurance engagement, often linked to standards or legal obligations.
• Certify: issue a formal certificate of conformity to a recognized standard or scheme.

Typical artifacts for assurances:

• Test plans and reports (verification and validation results)
• Assurance statements (management assertions and IA/external assurance conclusions)
• Audit workpapers and audit reports
• Metrics dashboards and evidence logs

Measurable objects for assurances:

• Design effectiveness: whether the control, as designed, should manage the risk.
• Operating effectiveness: whether the control actually operated as intended over a period.
• Residual risk: risk level remaining after controls, evidenced by measurement.

These pairings reflect the framework logic:

• NIST MEA aligns with verify, validate, measure, and evidence.
• ISO/IEC 42001 “performance evaluation” aligns with monitor, measure, audit, and management review.
• ISO 23894 monitoring and review align with independent assurance that risk treatment remains fit for purpose.

By placing each verb in its family and attaching the right artifacts and metrics, you create language that is audit-ready and board-comprehensible.

Step 3: Board-slide and policy language patterns for precision

Boards favor headlines that state the object, the correct verb, and a measurable attribute. This is easiest if you adopt modular patterns for headlines and clauses and stick to them. The goal is not eloquence; it is precision that maps to frameworks and evidence.

Recommended headline patterns for controls:

• “We [establish/implement/operationalize] [control/safeguard] for [AI system/use case] with [scope/coverage metric].”
• “We [integrate/enforce] [gate/standard/check] in [process/tool] to achieve [objective/threshold].”
• “We [monitor/remediate] [risk/control] with [frequency/SLA], reducing [incident rate/residual risk].”

Recommended headline patterns for assurances:

• “We [verify/validate/measure] [performance/fairness/robustness/control effectiveness] using [method/metric] across [scope/period].”
• “We [audit/assess] [process/control] against [standard/criterion], resulting in [rating/findings].”
• “We [attest/assure/certify] that [control/system] meets [requirement], based on [evidence set/date].”

Policy clause patterns (controls):

• “The organization shall [establish/implement/enforce] [control] for all [systems/classes] and [integrate] it into [lifecycle/operations].”
• “Owners shall [configure/monitor] [parameters/thresholds] and [remediate] deviations within [timeframe].”

Policy clause patterns (assurances):

• “The organization shall [verify/validate] [metrics/controls] at [frequency] and retain [evidence artifacts] for [retention period].”
• “Internal Audit shall [audit] [scope] against [standard], and management shall [attest] to remediation of findings by [date].”

Each of these patterns is intentionally paired to frameworks:

• Plan–do (ISO/IEC 42001): establish, implement, integrate.
• Check: monitor, measure, audit, verify, validate.
• Act: remediate and attest to closure, with evidence.
• NIST RMF alignment: GOV (establish/enforce), MAP (assess), MEA (measure/validate), MAN (implement/monitor/remediate).

Embedding this structure in your decks and policies ensures that every claim points to a concrete artifact and metric, enabling seamless traceability during assurance or regulatory inquiries.

Step 4: Guided practice orientation and decision logic

Although you will practice separately, it helps to internalize the decision logic you will use when choosing or revising verbs under time pressure. When you draft a headline or clause, pause and ask three questions:

1) What is the object of the statement?

• If the object is a policy, process, safeguard, or configuration, you are in the controls domain. Choose enactment verbs.
• If the object is a metric, outcome, effectiveness rating, or conformance status, you are in the assurances domain. Choose evidence verbs.

2) What is the lifecycle position?

• If you are setting up or changing how work happens (Plan/Do; GOV/MAN; risk treatment), favor establish, implement, integrate, configure, enforce.
• If you are checking or proving (Check; MEA; monitoring and review), favor verify, validate, measure, audit, evidence, attest, certify.
• If you are fixing issues and closing the loop (Act; MAN), combine remediate (control) with attest or evidence (assurance) to demonstrate closure.

3) What artifact and metric will you attach?

• Controls should reference tangible artifacts: policies, SOPs, runbooks, configurations, gates, or playbooks. Metrics should show coverage and execution (e.g., percent of models gated, exceptions rate, MTTR).
• Assurances should reference tangible evidence: test plans, result logs, audit reports, assurance statements. Metrics should show effectiveness and residual risk (e.g., fairness deltas, robustness scores, conformance rates).

This structured decision path prevents ambiguous phrasing such as “We ensured compliance,” which hides whether you enacted a control or proved its effectiveness. Instead, you might write: “We enforced policy X via release gates in Y pipeline (control) and verified conformance at 98% across Q4 releases (assurance).”

Compact checklist for ongoing use

• Identify the domain: control or assurance. Do not mix verbs unless you explicitly show both action and evidence as separate clauses.
• Map to the lifecycle: plan–do for controls; check for assurances; act to close gaps and attest closure.
• Select the correct verb family: enactment (establish, implement, operationalize, integrate, configure, enforce, monitor, remediate) or evidence (assess, verify, validate, evidence, demonstrate, audit, attest, assure, certify).
• Attach artifacts: policy/SOP/runbook/configuration for controls; test plan/results/audit/assurance statement for assurances.
• Attach metrics: coverage and execution for controls; effectiveness and residual risk for assurances.
• Anchor to frameworks: NIST RMF (GOV, MAP, MEA, MAN), ISO/IEC 42001 (plan–do–check–act), ISO 23894 (risk treatment, monitoring and review).
• Draft headlines and clauses that are board-ready: clear object, correct verb, measurable attribute, and time frame.

Micro-glossary

• Control: A policy, process, technical safeguard, or oversight mechanism that manages AI risk. Controls change behavior or environment.
• Assurance: Evidence or activities that give confidence that controls are suitably designed and operating effectively to deliver intended outcomes.
• Establish: Create formal governance elements such as policies, roles, or standards.
• Implement: Put a designed control into operation for the first time.
• Operationalize: Embed a control into routine processes and tools so it runs consistently.
• Integrate: Connect a control to adjacent processes so it triggers at the right point.
• Configure: Set parameters that determine control behavior.
• Enforce: Apply the control in a way that constrains actions or decisions.
• Monitor: Observe control and system behavior to detect issues or drift.
• Remediate: Correct nonconformities or incidents and prevent recurrence.
• Assess: Evaluate against criteria to judge status or maturity.
• Verify: Confirm conformance to specifications or standards.
• Validate: Confirm outcomes or performance meet intended objectives in appropriate conditions.
• Evidence: Provide artifacts or data that substantiate a claim.
• Demonstrate: Show proof through observable tests or walkthroughs.
• Audit: Conduct an independent, systematic examination against defined criteria.
• Attest: Formally assert a conclusion, often by management or an independent body.
• Assure: Provide structured confidence regarding controls or outcomes, often framed by a standard.
• Certify: Formally recognize conformity to a defined standard or scheme.

By consistently applying these verb families—paired with the right artifacts and metrics—you turn AI governance from abstract intent into testable, board-ready claims. The board sees what you built, how it runs, and how you know it works. Regulators and auditors see clear traceability from policy to control to evidence. Most importantly, teams gain a shared language that accelerates decision-making, reduces ambiguity, and supports responsible, resilient AI operations at scale.