Eight in Ten EMEA Enterprises Escalate AI Incidents to Board or C-Suite as AI Agents Test Governance: IBM

• 15 Oct 2026
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

New research by IBM finds that AI-related incidents are reaching boardrooms across Europe and the Middle East among the organizations surveyed, but governance capabilities and risk accountability are not keeping pace with adoption of the technology.

Eight in ten executives surveyed say an AI-related incident – including an agent failure, data exposure, AI-driven decision error, or AI security breach – reached their board or C-suite in the past year. Yet fewer than half (40%) of those organizations cite a change to AI governance policy or framework in response.

When the pace of deploying AI outstrips governance and compliance frameworks readiness, rather than pause while governance adapts, the majority (56%) of executives surveyed report pressing ahead within agreed risk limits. Just a third delay deployment entirely until their governance is ready.

The survey, of more than 3,200 senior executives at organizations across eight countries in Europe and the Middle East, suggests governance policies will be tested further as AI agents take on more autonomous work. Thirty-five percent of respondents say they are running agentic AI in production today, yet three-quarters expect AI agents to have some level of autonomy towards decisions by 2027. Only 37% say their current governance system is designed to scale with agentic AI deployment.

Ana Paula Assis, IBM Senior Vice President and Chair, EMEA and APAC, said: "The AI debate has moved from adoption to governance and accountability. As organizations progress from AI assistants to autonomous agents, governance can no longer be treated as a compliance exercise. It has become a business requirement and value enabler.

The enterprises that can scale AI with accountability and trust will be postitioned to realize business value. That means governance must be built into how agents operate, with clear boundaries on what they can do, clear ownership when things go wrong, and controls that work in real-time."

Nearly all executives (98%) surveyed have formally assigned responsibility for AI risk at board level, including 26% with a dedicated board-level AI committee. Yet the research found no clear consensus on accountability for adverse outcomes from AI agents. An organization's CIO or CTO was the most frequently cited role with assigned responsibility for adverse outcomes from AI agents, selected by just 17% of all respondents.

Respondents' views on legal liability when an AI system causes significant harm were also divided: 20% say it should be shared proportionally between deployer and vendor, 19% say there should be a regulatory framework that does not yet adequately exist, and 14% say it should sit with the AI vendor or technology provider.

To manage increasingly autonomous AI agents making decisions without human approval at each step by 2027, executives expect to need formal legal or contractual frameworks defining AI vendor liability for agent failures (33%), defined human escalation thresholds (32%), real-time monitoring and audit trails of agent decisions and actions (30%) and the ability to immediately halt agent activity across the enterprise (29%).