If there’s one industry that’s lived and breathed data governance long before it became a trending topic, it’s finance. But what stood out at Data Leaders Forum wasn’t just how financial and identity organizations have treated governance as table stakes. It was how their approach is changing. Governance is no longer just a compliance checkbox. 

For the most forward-thinking teams, it’s become a strategic advantage, a framework for enabling AI, improving trust, and accelerating business clarity.

Here are some of the most important themes that emerged from the panel, along with examples and insight from experts who are putting governance to work in meaningful, measurable ways.

Governance is no longer an afterthought

A shift is happening. Rather than retrofitting governance once products are live, teams are embedding it earlier: at the architecture and design stage. At ID.me, Data Governance Lead Beatrice Dlesk described how her team has worked to make governance an early-stage partner in product development. 

The result? Better-managed systems from day one, and less time trying to bend governance to fit systems that were never designed for it.

For data teams that feel stuck playing catch-up, this mindset is a reminder that early involvement matters. It also points to a future where governance isn’t seen as a necessary evil, but as part of building a strong, scalable product from the ground up.

Prioritizing clarity over control

If there was a throughline across all of the panellists, it was the power of shared understanding. Clint Shannon, Senior Director of Corporate Systems at Alegeus painted a clear picture: before his team could enforce rules around access, they had to tackle something more foundational: language.

“We might have people from product, finance, and go-to-market thinking they’re looking at the same thing… but they’re really looking at three different data points.”

To fix this, Clint’s team leaned into glossary development and context-building — using Secoda not just as a control center, but as a hub for education. Their investment in documentation paid off. Even without broad report access, teams across departments could view definitions, understand ownership, and avoid misinterpretations that slow down decision-making.

How to get people to actually follow governance protocols

Governance tools don’t work if no one uses them. And gaining adoption is often the hardest part. Alegeus tackled this head-on with gamification. Clint’s team awarded points and prizes for logging into Secoda, asking and answering questions, and contributing context. The results were impressive: not only did usage spike, but once enough content existed, the team could remove incentives entirely — and adoption kept growing.

“One year later, now that we’ve got a critical mass of content in there, we’re seeing our usage spike. There’s no prizes left. There’s no points anymore. It’s just pure utilization.”

While gamification may not work for every organization, the underlying insight is universal: governance needs to feel useful before it feels mandatory. People need to see personal wins before organizational ones.

Everyone owns a piece of governance

Another insight echoed across all of our speakers: governance is most effective when it's distributed.

Chad Sanderson, CEO of Gable.ai, emphasized how modern organizations are moving away from the “central gatekeeper” model. Instead, they’re giving each function — from analysts to engineers — ownership over a small slice of governance.

“It’s not about one team trying to do everything anymore… Now it’s everyone doing a little.”

This federated model works because it meets people where they are. And it avoids the burnout and bottlenecks that centralized governance teams so often face. At ID.me, Beatrice echoed this with her own experience. As a team of one, she’s worked to formalize governance tasks people are already doing, not create net-new responsibilities.

“Most organizations have people doing governance, even if they don’t call it that… a big part of my job is just naming those things and building light processes around them.”

This kind of governance doesn’t ask people to change everything. It simply helps them notice what they’re already doing, and do it more intentionally.

AI is a reason to act, not just a risk to mitigate 

The discussion also touched on AI — not just as a buzzword, but as a litmus test. If your data isn’t governed, your AI won’t perform.

Beatrice put it plainly: “There’s a lot of focus on AI-readiness… but if you can’t even figure out what your data means, your model isn’t going to give you any kind of useful result.”

This is where governance becomes proactive. Rather than waiting to fix broken models, teams are starting to use governance as the foundation for trustworthy AI. That includes clear data definitions, robust metadata, and well-defined access protocols — all of which improve explainability and auditability, especially as companies experiment with large language models and autonomous agents.

Chad took this further, pointing out that modern data pipelines are beginning to resemble AI agent chains — where outputs cascade across multiple automated systems. That complexity makes governance even more essential:

“If governance only exists in the warehouse, it’s going to break down fast. It has to live in the pipelines, in the code, in the decisions.”

Shifting the narrative around data governance

It’s easy to cast governance as the team that says “no.” But the panel challenged that view — especially Clint, who compared good governance to guardrails on an F1 track.

“Those guardrails don’t slow you down. They help you go faster — because they make it safer.”

If you want to change how governance is perceived at your organization, this framing matters. It’s not about control for control’s sake. It’s about enabling speed with confidence, clarity, and security. And that’s true not just in finance, but in any industry with sensitive data and complex teams.

Don’t wait to be ready

One of the most valuable pieces of advice came from Beatrice, who reminded the audience that perfect conditions rarely arrive. You don’t need a 10-person team or a pristine data model to start building governance that matters.

“Start with what’s already happening. You don’t need to boil the ocean. Just pick one thing you can do to improve trust and clarity — and go from there.”

That’s how real governance work begins. Not as a grand transformation, but as a dozen small changes — each one helping the business move faster, safer, and smarter.

If there’s one takeaway from the panel, it’s that governance succeeds when it’s embedded: in your workflows, your culture, your tooling - and the panellists each shared their successes with Secoda.

Secoda helps teams manage governance as a living, integrated part of their day-to-day. With features like automated documentation, access management, data quality scoring, lineage tracking, and a centralized glossary, Secoda gives teams the ability to govern without slowing down. If you’re ready to learn more about Secoda, get in touch with our team here.