Awards programmes make an important contribution to strengthening reporting practice, and operate with sincere  intent and committed professionals. Yet, like most recognition systems globally, they face a number of structural  realities that naturally shape outcomes. 

One such reality is the challenge of ensuring completely objective judgement. Panels are typically composed of  experienced professionals, but in many specialised fields, the community of available judges can be relatively small.  This can result in recurring panels and shared perspectives, not out of bias, but because the talent pool is limited.  

Criteria such as clarity, innovation, and storytelling rely on professional interpretation. While robust judging platforms  often recommend mitigations — including conflict disclosures, anonymised submissions, and structured scoring — publicly available information suggests that evaluations still rely heavily on narrative-based assessment.  Sponsorship arrangements, which are common across professional associations internationally, also create  unavoidable perception risks, even where no improper influence exists. Governance bodies such as ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) and Transparency International note that these dynamics are universal  features of reporting award ecosystems, not failings of any particular programme.

Another reality is that participation is voluntary, creating a naturally self-selecting pool of entrants. Many organisations participate repeatedly, resulting in a familiar set of reports for judges to evaluate. Incremental  improvements may occur, but the overall standard of the entrant pool — rather than the entire reporting landscape — ultimately determines the level of excellence that can be recognised. In principle, if judging were based strictly on  evidence-heavy criteria, some categories might occasionally yield “no award.” In practice, most recognition  frameworks aim to acknowledge progress within the available pool rather than enforce absolute thresholds. This  subjectivity becomes particularly relevant when reports are “quite difficult to separate winners and losers,” as noted in  Business Day’s coverage of the mid-cap category. 

Taken together, these dynamics reflect a common challenge across many award systems: the tension between  recognising effort and rewarding true, evidence-based governance excellence. This is an observation of the  broader ecosystem rather than a criticism of any reporting awards programme.