AICD or IoD Course: Will It Get You a Board Seat?

One of the first questions I hear from executives who want a board career is whether they should do the course. In Australia, that means the Australian Institute of Company Directors’ Company Directors Course. In New Zealand, it means the Institute of Directors’ Company Directors’ Course. Both are well regarded. Both are a significant investment of money and time. And both are often bought for the wrong reason.

The course will not get you a board seat on its own. It can make you a better director, a more credible candidate and a more confident contributor in the room. But I regularly meet executives who have completed it, added the letters to their LinkedIn profile and then waited for boards to call. The calls rarely come. The course was never designed to do that job.

So the real question is not whether the course is worth it. It is what the course is for, when it makes sense and what else has to be in place for it to pay off.

What the Australian course involves

The AICD Company Directors Course covers five areas: governance and the practice of directorship, the legal environment, risk and strategy, financial literacy and performance, and board effectiveness. It runs over five days, preceded by several weeks of pre-reading, and can be done face to face, in a virtual classroom, as a residential program or self-paced online.

The assessments are optional. Participants who complete them earn the Company Directors Course Award, and AICD members who do so may be eligible to use the GAICD post-nominal.

At 2026 rates published by the AICD, the course costs from around $5,800 for members doing the self-paced version to more than $16,000 for non-members doing the residential program. Check the current pricing before you commit, because it changes.

What the New Zealand course involves

The IoD Company Directors’ Course in New Zealand is a five-and-a-half day intensive, run residentially or non-residentially. It covers governance best practice, strategy in the boardroom, the board’s role in finance, directors and the law, how boards work together, and risk governance. The IoD describes it as designed for directors and senior executives who have at least one to five years’ experience working on or with boards and a sound knowledge of business finance.

At the IoD’s published rates, it costs a little over $10,800 including GST for members and over $13,200 for non-members.

The New Zealand course is also the usual first step towards Chartered Membership of the IoD. To become a Chartered Member, you need to have completed the course or an equivalent, pass a separate assessment, currently hold a board role in a qualifying organisation and meet the IoD’s standards of character and conduct.

That last requirement is worth noticing. The Chartered designation assumes you already have a board seat. It recognises directors. It does not create them.

What the course does well

A good course gives you a shared language with experienced directors. You learn how a board thinks about duties, liability, risk, strategy and the relationship with management. You practise reading board papers, testing assumptions and contributing to a collective decision. For many executives, that is the first time they have been asked to think like a director rather than a manager.

It also signals commitment. A chair or search consultant reading your board resume will see that you have invested in understanding governance. For candidates without formal board experience, that can help establish that board work is a considered direction, not a passing idea.

And it can build your network. You will spend days with other directors and aspiring directors, some of whom already sit on boards or will in future.

What the course cannot do

The course does not change the evidence in your career. A chair appointing a director is asking what you will contribute to this board, now. Your qualification tells them you understand governance. It does not tell them what you have done with it, what gap you fill on their skills matrix or why you are the right person for their organisation.

That is the gap I see most often. Executives treat the course as the missing ingredient, when the missing ingredient is usually positioning. Their board resume still reads like an executive resume. Their board value proposition is unclear. They have no governance evidence beyond their executive role. And they are not known to the chairs and consultants who fill seats.

The course cannot fix any of those. It sits alongside them.

Who should do it now

The course is a strong investment if you are in one of these situations:

• You have been offered a board seat, or expect one soon, and want to be ready for the responsibility

• You already hold a not-for-profit, subsidiary or committee role and want to strengthen your governance practice

• You are a finance leader heading towards audit and risk committee work and want the broader director perspective

• You are aiming for a Crown entity or government board, where panels often look for evidence of governance training

• Your target boards commonly expect it, which is true in some sectors more than others

In each case, the course builds on something that is already moving.

Who should wait

If you have no governance experience at all, no clear target and no board network, the course is unlikely to change your prospects on its own. You may be better served by building the foundations first: a governance role in a not-for-profit or community organisation, committee work inside your current employer, clarity on the type of board you want and a board resume that shows your contribution.

Then do the course, when you can use it immediately in a role and the learning has somewhere to go.

This is not an argument against the course. It is an argument about sequence. The same investment returns far more when it lands on a candidate who is already building a board career. Our piece on board-ready versus appointment-ready explains the difference.

Shorter programs and other routes

The Company Directors Course is not the only option. Both institutes offer shorter, more introductory programs and a range of single-topic courses, which can be a sensible first step if you are still testing whether board work is for you. Some universities and business schools also run governance programs, and many sector bodies offer governance training for their own boards.

Choose based on where you are. If you are exploring, a short program will tell you whether the work interests you before you commit to the full course. If you are already in a governance role, the full course is usually the better investment. And if your target boards are in a specific sector, such as health, education or financial services, check whether sector-specific training carries more weight with those chairs.

Make the six months after the course count

The course is most valuable when you use it straight away. The executives who get the most from it treat the months afterwards as the start of their board search, not the end of their preparation.

That means updating your board resume and biography to show your governance thinking, not only the qualification. It means taking the relationships you built on the course seriously and staying in touch with the directors you met. It means applying what you learned in any governance role you already hold, from a not-for-profit board to a committee at work, so you have recent examples to talk about. And it means being specific about the boards you want, so the people you meet know how to help you.

Done this way, the course becomes the point where your board career starts moving, rather than a credential that sits on your profile.

How chairs and search consultants read it

Chairs and board search consultants see the post-nominal as a positive signal, but rarely a deciding one. What moves them is relevance. They are looking at your sector experience, your functional expertise, your judgement and how you would work with the rest of the board.

If two candidates are otherwise equal, the course may tip the balance. If a candidate has deep sector knowledge and strong governance evidence but no course, they will often be preferred over a candidate with the course and a thinner record. What board search consultants assess covers this in more detail.

How to show it on your board resume

If you have completed the course, include it in a short governance education section, with the award or designation you hold. Do not lead with it. Your opening should still be about the contribution you bring to a board.

If you are enrolled, you can say so, with the expected completion date. If you completed the course some years ago, keep it, and show how you have applied it since.

And be accurate about post-nominals. Use GAICD or CMInstD only if you hold the current designation, not because you attended the course.

The better question to ask

Instead of asking whether the course will get you a board seat, ask what would make a chair choose you. Then work backwards. The answer usually includes a clear target, governance evidence you can point to, a board resume that reads like a director’s and relationships with the people who fill seats. The course may well be part of that plan. It is rarely the whole of it.

If you want to turn your experience and training into a board case chairs can see, you can see how I approach board resume writing.

If you are deciding whether to invest in the AICD or IoD course now, book a complimentary Clarity Session and we will look at where you are on the board path and what will move you forward fastest.