Good governance means asking the right questions

CEO of Taranaki Chamber of Commerce, director, community leader, former sea captain and champion Toastmaster, Arun Chaudhari MInstD has interesting stories to tell and delivers them in the most engaging way. 

Not least, his account of his first governance role on the board of trustees of his daughters’ secondary school.

“My wife was teaching there too and the conversation over dinner was all about school . . . I felt rather left out,” he laughs. “I thought, ‘how can I get into this conversation?’

“So I decided to stand for the school board but I told a colleague who said, ‘Don’t do that – the most embarrassing thing is, if you aren’t elected, you get your name in the newspaper as someone who missed out’.”

As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. But undeterred, Chaudhari stood for the next election and was successful. 

“I thought, ‘now I can partake in conversations at dinner,” he says. “But my youngest daughter was also on the board as student rep and, of course, with my wife being a teacher it would not have been ethical for us to talk about board matters in front of her, so now she was excluded from our after-dinner conversations.”

That was the start of a governance career that has included chairing NZ Oil and Gas Specialist Technologies Group, and a three-year stint which he has just completed on the board of New Zealand Chambers of Commerce and Industry. 

A former president of the New Plymouth Indian Community, he spent six years on the board of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce prior to taking on his current CEO role and is also a current director of the board of Taranaki’s Stratford Park A&P showground, equestrian and motorsport complex. 

Being a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD) has helped him on his journey. He now sits on its Taranaki branch committee, and has completed the organisation’s Company Directors’ Course (CDC).

“The IoD is a very good resource for best practice governance and networking,” he says. 

The CDC programme is a five-and-a-half-day residential course for directors and senior leaders reporting to boards and focuses on improving decision-making in the boardroom.

“There are brilliant people leading the programme and you also learn a lot from your peer group."

Chaudhari has managed to seamlessly weave his governance roles in with his working career. 

Educated in Mumbai, he then spent two decades in the Merchant Navy, including captaining oil tankers, while also gaining his B-Com (extramurally) from Delhi University. 

He migrated to New Zealand with his wife, Sangeeta, and their daughters in 1994, and took up a managerial role at Port Taranaki, continuing his education and gaining a Master of Business Administration (MBA) through Massey University.

“It was a very intensive course and, like the CDC, about 50 per cent of the learning is from your fellow students.” 

At Massey, he chose governance as one of his elective papers, “fascinated by some of the scandals that had happened around boards of huge corporations”.

“There is a very good saying in governance, ‘the fish rots from its head down’ and that goes back to the board,” says Chaudhari, who wanted to understand how unethical practices can take place without being detected. 

Chaudhari believes good governance means people are held to account, and where the checks and balances are done. “It’s asking the right questions and following the right practices,” he says. 

For those considering governance, Chaudhari recommends looking for roles with a trust, committee or board of an organisation you feel passionate about. From there, it requires learning and finding your own individual sense of purpose, which will inform not only what types of boards and organisations you want to invest your time in, but also, why you want to sit on a board in the first place. 

“Look for courses, grab every opportunity, join the IoD and learn about good governance because you learn to do things the right way, and not to cut corners,” Chaudhari says.