Whether your organization is a public, private, or nonprofit entity, your board members face an incredibly demanding environment right now. Between rapid technological shifts, economic volatility, and intensifying stakeholder scrutiny, the pressure to spot hidden risks, maintain compliance, and protect long-term value before a crisis hits is intense, and the margin for error is virtually nonexistent.
Are you certain your current governance structure is built to withstand these modern pressures? Corporate Governance: Guiding Principles for Board Oversight offers a clear way forward.
Developed in collaboration with PwC, this comprehensive and complementary guide was recently published by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), a globally recognized organization dedicated to helping entities reduce fraud while improving operations and oversight. The resource’s aim: to serve as a common reference point where governance expectations can be fragmented.
What COSO’s Corporate Governance Brings to Your Board
Organized around 12 core, board-level principles, COSO’s Corporate Governance guide provides a practical foundation for internal audit, risk, and governance leaders to drive meaningful improvement.
It focuses heavily on critical basics, like board structure, accountability, composition, and effectiveness. But it also delves into the responsibilities that can be particularly challenging for board members today, such as executive performance and compensation, culture, technology and data oversight, stakeholder engagement, executive leadership and succession, and risk management.
As boards face growing demands around resilience, technology oversight, stakeholder confidence, and long-term value creation, the guide’s framework offers a useful lens for assessing whether your organization’s current board governance practices remain fit for purpose.
What to Expect from COSO’s Corporate Governance Guide
To help your board get the most out of Corporate Governance: Guiding Principles for Board Oversight, it helps to understand what this resource is and isn’t:
- It IS broadly applicable: These principles are built to work globally across all geographies, jurisdictions, and entity types — whether members sit on a public, private, or nonprofit board.
- It IS grounded in real-world expertise: The framework draws on extensive research, recognized global guidance, and direct input from active directors, executives, and governance professionals.
- It IS focused strictly on oversight: The guide clearly respects the line between governance and management. It includes “management enablement” tips to show how executive teams can best support board members with data and analysis, while keeping day-to-day operations squarely in management’s hands.
- It IS NOT a rigid rulebook: The guidance is directional and illustrative. It does not set legal requirements, mandate a single “correct” governance model, or list every single board expectation.
- It IS NOT a replacement for compliance: This framework is meant to complement, not replace, applicable laws, regulations, or your existing governance standards.
Get the Guide
Find the full 2026 guide here.
Want Guidance Tailored for Your Organization?
Rehmann’s Risk Advisory team helps boards, audit committees, executives, and governance leaders of public, private, and nonprofit organizations translate leading practices into practical, organization-specific actions. In step with its strategic priorities and an increasingly complex risk environment, our internal audit, risk, and governance advisory services can help your organization:
- Assess its governance effectiveness.
- Enhance its board and committee reporting
- Strengthen its risk oversight and internal control alignment
- Identify opportunities to evolve oversight structures.
Contact Rehmann today to learn more.