Join Our Exclusive
LIVE VIRTUAL EXECUTIVE COHORT
Starting September 2026!
Govern the Decision, Not Just the Tool
A four-week executive cohort for finance leaders on seeing and controlling AI's influence before it impacts your numbers. Built on Root Idea's Decision Governance Framework.
If an AI-related mistake happened tomorrow that resulted in a material loss, could you demonstrate to your board that reasonable oversight was in place?
Most finance leaders can't answer that question yet. Not because they've been careless. Because AI's influence is often invisible. An analyst shapes a recommendation in their personal ChatGPT before the meeting. A manager pressure-tests a pricing call with a chatbot before it reaches a review. The work changes faster than any control environment has kept pace, and it's happening whether or not your company has formally deployed AI, because the tools are already in your people's hands.
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This cohort exists to give you answers. Over four sessions, you'll build the judgment to see where AI is already shaping your decisions, understand what effective controls actually look like, and put oversight in place that satisfies a board without smothering the business.
AI didn't ask permission to enter your close.
It came in through a Copilot license and an analyst who wanted to move faster. It's in the variance analysis. It's shaping the reconciliation. It's touching the numbers that roll up into what you sign.
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Here's the uncomfortable part. You can approve every tool and lock down every dataset and still have no idea how AI is shaping the decisions that hit your P&L. Tools and data are the easy part. The decisions are where the accountability lives, and almost no one is governing that layer.
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And because AI's influence lands before anyone with authority sees it, you can't catch it at the tool. The tool was never the main thing to govern. The decision was.
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That's the gap this cohort closes. Not with more policy. With a way of thinking you can use the moment you leave.
Four things you'll leave able to see that you can't see clearly today.
01
Where "AI governance" actually breaks down. Most organizations govern tools and data and call it governance. You'll learn to separate tool governance, data governance, and decision governance, and see why the third is truly your blind spot. This one distinction reframes the entire problem.
02
How to build controls that hold up no matter how the rules land. AI regulation is unsettled and will be for years. You'll learn to design oversight around durable principles, traceability, human accountability, auditability, documentation, so your controls stand up whether the rules tighten, loosen, or change shape entirely. You build once, instead of rebuilding every time the rules move.
03
Why your control point is in the wrong place. Traditional controls sit at the sign-off. AI does its work long before anything reaches an approver, so by then the reasoning is already locked in. You'll learn to move your controls to where AI's influence actually lives.
04
What accountability actually looks like, as an operating model you can run. Not a philosophy. A three-layer Decision Governance Operating System: a Material Decision Inventory that gives you visibility into the decisions that matter, a Governance Playbook that sets the standards and validation behind them, and a Documentation Standard that makes it all auditable. Visibility, accountability, audit. Something a controller can run and an auditor can trace.
Four live sessions. Two hours each. A small group of peers.
Week 1
Leading AI Instead of
Reacting to It
Where AI actually creates value in a finance organization, why most initiatives stall in pilot purgatory, and how to develop an executive point of view instead of chasing use cases one at a time.
WEEK 2
Governing the Decision,
Not Just the Tool
Tool vs. data vs. decision governance, and why your control point has to move from the sign-off to the inputs and reasoning where AI actually does its work. How to build oversight that holds up in front of a board, an auditor, or a regulator without adding weight the business can't carry.
WEEK 3
Building Your Decision Governance
Operating System
The three layers that make it real: a Material Decision Inventory for visibility, a Governance Playbook for accountability, and a Documentation Standard for audit. Who owns what, what gets validated and how, what gets documented, connected to business strategy rather than run as an isolated technology project.
WEEK 4
From Strategy to Execution
A practical path for introducing AI safely, building organizational confidence, and moving faster because you have oversight in place, not slower.
Built for the executives who own the numbers.
This room is for the finance leaders who are accountable for the business impact of AI.
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CFOs
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Chief Accounting Officers
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Controllers
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Finance Transformation and FP&A leaders
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Finance executives responsible for AI strategy, governance, or transformation
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Seats are intentionally limited to 10 to 15 executives, because the value is as much in the room as in the material. You'll think through your own exposure alongside peers wrestling with the same questions, candidly, and off the record.
About the Facilitator
Clyde Calhoun spent more than 30 years leading enterprise transformations at Lockheed Martin, GE, and Owens Corning, across operations, supply chain, sales, and finance, where the only results that counted were the ones that showed up in the financials.
That cross-functional experience is the whole point. AI is an enterprise problem, not a departmental one. The assumptions it makes in forecasting ripple into capital allocation. The calls it influences in pricing land in operations. Clyde knows how those connections work and where the exposure hides.
He founded Root Idea to help finance executives establish visibility and control over AI-influenced decisions before they become board-level problems. This cohort distills that work into four sessions.
What you'll walk away with
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Four live executive sessions in a small, senior peer group
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Root Idea's Decision Governance Framework, and the four lenses to apply it
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A clear-eyed view of where AI is likely influencing decisions in your own organization
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The questions to ask your team, and the questions to expect from your board
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The confidence to answer the one that opened this page
Reserve your seat.
Format:
Live Virtual Executive Cohort
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Schedule:
Four consecutive Mondays beginning September 14, 1:00 to 3:00 PM EST
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Investment:
$2,000 per participant
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Cohort size:
Limited to 10 to 15 executives
This is a working session, not a webinar.
Seats go to executives ready to dig in.
By the end, the question shifts from "what should oversight look like?" to "where does my own exposure actually sit?"​
September 2026
Live Virtual Executive Cohort
2,000
A four-week executive cohort for finance leaders on seeing and controlling AI's influence before it impacts your numbers. Built on Root Idea's Decision Governance Framework.
Valid for 4 weeks
Limited to 10 to 15 executives