The development sector loves panels. If there’s a problem, we panel it. If the problem persists, we panel it again—this time with a different moderator. If there is still no improvement, we add another panellist and call it ‘multi-stakeholder’.
Panels have become our default response to complexity. They are everywhere: conferences, donor consultations, launch events, ‘listening sessions’. It is a format we use obsessively, often without asking a basic question: What exactly are panels meant to accomplish?
A confession from the stage
This is not an external critique. I have been on many panels. I have helped organise them. I have nodded along as familiar points were made in different words, while glancing at the clock and hoping someone would say something genuinely new.
The realisation crept up slowly. At one conference (the name doesn’t matter), the panel was meant to tackle a hard question about implementation failures. The panellists were smart, experienced, and well intentioned. And yet, as the session unfolded, no one actually responded to anyone else. No assumptions were challenged. No trade-offs were surfaced. We ran out of time just as the discussion began to warm up.
People left saying it was a ‘good panel’. I left wondering what, exactly, had happened.
Panels are a safe space, which they aren’t meant to be
Most panels in the development sector are not designed to produce insight or disagreement or decisions. They are designed to make everyone feel safe, with similar speakers and similar questions, which ultimately lead to no solutions.
They follow the same format:
- A moderator reads impressive bios.
- Each panellist restates what everyone already agrees on.
- Time runs out just as things get interesting.
- An audience question begins with “This is more of a comment…”
At no point does anyone give real answers.
Panels reward fluency, not thinking. They favour people who sound good in short bursts, not those wrestling with uncertainty. And because panels are public, recorded, and sometimes tweeted, they encourage performance rather than honesty.
Why we keep doing them anyway
Panels survive because they solve multiple institutional problems at once. They look inclusive, are easy to organise, are comfortable, and produce photographs to highlight ‘impact’. Most importantly, panels create the appearance of action without requiring any decisions.
The deepest flaw is not the format itself, but what it allows us to avoid. Panels allow us to talk around hard questions instead of through them.
They are especially attractive in the development sector because they let us demonstrate seriousness without exposing disagreement, which can complicate partnerships, upset funders, or reveal that we are trying to figure out what works.
What would actually be transformative
If we’re serious about change, the fix isn’t ‘better panels’. It’s fewer panels and more courage.
Here are some swaps that can make a difference:
- Replace panels with debates that represent two opposing views. Two colliding opinions on a clearly framed question force assumptions into the open. Debate clarifies trade-offs, sharpens arguments, and helps the sector distinguish between disagreement and bad faith—something we urgently need to relearn.
- Replace panels with case autopsies—an honest examination of one real project that didn’t work. What assumptions failed? What signals were missed? This builds collective intelligence far more effectively than showcasing success stories that everyone already knows how to narrate.
- Replace panels with decision rooms. Small, closed-door sessions where participants are asked to make choices, not statements. Decision rooms surface priorities, constraints, and power dynamics—things panels carefully avoid, but real work depends on.
- Replace panels with interviews that are able to hold the speaker accountable. A single speaker, questioned well, can contribute more than five speakers engaged in surface-level conversation. Interviews allow accountability, follow-up, and coherence—qualities panels dilute.
- Replace panels with working sessions. Bring people together around a draft policy, a live problem, or an unresolved question. Ask them to improve something tangible. The conversation changes immediately when the goal is to build, not perform.
It’s important to focus on design. Organisers can start by asking a simple question before defaulting to a panel: What do we want participants to leave with—clarity, disagreement, a decision, or a next step? Panels are rarely the best answer.
They could also
- Limit sessions to fewer people and longer exchanges.
- Create spaces that are not recorded, so uncertainty feels safer.
- Separate learning conversations from signalling events.
- Value facilitation as much as moderation.
None of this is radical. It’s simply intentional.
A final reflection
Panels feel productive because they are visible. But visibility is not the same as progress. The development sector prides itself on innovation, experimentation, and systems change. Yet when it comes to how we think together in public, we cling to the safest format available. The problems we work on are complex, political, and uncomfortable. Our conversations about them should be too. Maybe it’s time we stopped panel-beating our way through every challenge and tried something a little riskier.
Because if nothing uncomfortable happened on the panel, it is likely nothing important did either.
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Know more
- Understand why conferences end up being exclusionary spaces.
- Read more about how panels became a default format at conferences.
