This piece is dedicated to Jaafar Yunusa, whom I met on an interview panel last week and promised I would write more, and Ayodele Aburo, whose gentle reminder that long-form writing still matters landed at the right time. Even in a soundbite world, there are still thinkers, leaders, and builders who want to sit with ideas long enough to let them stretch their thinking. Enjoy!
As 2025 rolled into 2026, I spent the closing weeks of the year in multiple mentoring sessions. Different people, different industries, different stages of life. Yet one question kept surfacing, almost verbatim.
“I’m thinking of doing XYZ certification. What do you think?”
My answer surprised them. It may surprise you, too.
“Nothing.”
Not because certifications are useless. Not because learning does not matter. But because the question itself was incomplete.
What I really wanted to understand was this. What do you want to learn in 2026, and why?
That pause you feel right now. That was the same pause in those sessions.
“But I just told you. I want to earn XYZ certification. Isn’t that what I want to learn?”
Across more than half a dozen mentoring conversations, I found myself unpacking the same idea repeatedly. A certification is not the same thing as knowledge. And knowledge, in the age of AI, is no longer what we think it is, especially when it is detached from application.
I am a product of leaders who allowed me to learn from real experiences, not just theory, and I try to honour that by being radically transparent with those I mentor. I share wins. I share losses. I share the things that worked and the things that humbled me. So I leaned into storytelling, as I always do, to explain why I was pushing back.
I started with a simple coaching question.
“So what?”
Why this certification? If you woke up tomorrow with it, what would actually change?
Almost 80 per cent of them could not articulate what would be different. The certification had become the prize.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. In a world of generative AI, content engines, and instant frameworks, knowledge is not scarce. It is abundant. Roadmaps to implementation are available at the click of a button. Contextual adaptations can be generated in seconds. This means that much of the “knowledge” you gained from that certificate program can be evaluated, tested, and even replicated by your employer or client almost instantly.
So the real question becomes this. If the knowledge is accessible, why do they need you?
The answer is Execution. And not just in the doing, but also in the Thinking / Strategy driving execution.
The ability to take knowledge, understand context, navigate constraints, spot opportunities, and deliver outcomes in the messy reality of organisations. That is the work. That is the differentiator.
Am I dismissing certifications? Absolutely not.
In the last fifteen months, I have earned at least 5 certifications. I paid for another one just last week, and that’s excluding my usual retinue of newsletters, videos, conversations with mentors and other platforms I leverage for learning. Yet several of them are not on my LinkedIn profile or even on a CV, because they were never about signalling. They were about sharpening my work.
Let me make this practical by sharing some experiences:
When I decided to undergo the The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria – CIBN ACIB program, it was not about adding letters to my name. It was about compressing years of banking knowledge and experience that I did not have coming into a leadership position in a Bank, into something I could consume quickly. It was also about access. At senior levels, you often need industry intelligence to make sound decisions, and I realised early that colleagues who had grown their careers in banking could access insights effortlessly, while I was constantly reaching out to friends across the industry for context. That was not scalable.
The ACIB program via the Lagos Business School Executive Education pathway gave me two things. A deep understanding of the business of banking and instant access to a community of experienced bankers across the Nigerian financial system. I remember one of my first major projects after the program. My boss asked for comparative data across specific banks. For the first time, one message to my cohort WhatsApp group resulted in calls/DMs from all the companies on my list. What used to take days took hours. My turnaround time on that task dropped by over 80 per cent, just from not having to wait for a friend of a friend to reply to my friend.
The certificate was never the goal; the practical knowledge and access delivered a bigger ROI than the letters behind the name.
The same logic applied to getting a Professional Certificate in Islamic Banking and Finance. How do I develop business-specific people strategies, hold people accountable for performance, and drive results without understanding the foundational principles of the business I am serving? I did not pursue it to earn a badge. I pursued it so I could ask better questions and lead better decisions.
And this logic is not limited to paid work.
I enrolled in a Leader as a Coach certification program covering Life Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and NLP skills to enhance my volunteer work with women, young adults, and teenagers. The world is changing rapidly, and I found myself struggling to partner effectively for sustainable behaviour change. When the opportunity arose, I invested not just financially, but also sacrificed weekends and personal time, all to gain knowledge that could help shape futures. Outside of the certification providers themselves, this is probably the first time I am sharing this publicly.
Then there is my Wimboard by Women In Management, Business & Public Service journey. A board mentorship and director development experience that connected me to one of the most exceptional mentors I have encountered – Arinola Kola-Daisi. After more than a decade of reporting to boards and board committees, Wimboard fundamentally deepened my understanding of governance and executive stakeholder management. Through sessions with seasoned board leaders such as Dr. Oluwatoyin Sanni Kunle Elebute Mary Akpobome Chioma Irukwu-Sideso CDir, DipESG, ACII, MBA, Abi Ayida, Cecilia Akintomide and Alawusa Adewuyi, FCIS, M.CIoD and Board Simulation sessions with Awuneba Ajumogobia FCA and Nneka NwobiI came away with more than an appreciation of board structures or governance mechanics. I gained clarity on purpose, why boards are designed the way they are, and how to leverage my unique skillset to position both my institution and the leadership teams I work with to serve not just organisational objectives, but broader societal interests.
Most importantly, I gained a powerful community of women doing remarkable work across industries, who are now just one DM away from amplifying impact.
That experience has strengthened how I support the advisory boards I currently serve and has prepared me, in a very real way, for expanded Executive responsibilities.
Again, the pattern holds. Knowledge applied. Perspective expanded. Impact multiplied.
So no, I am not dismissing certifications. But if your only goal is to earn one, AI and the disintermediation of knowledge have already rendered that dream obsolete.
How should you approach this instead?
- First, start with why. Simon Sinekgave us the cheat code years ago. Why do you need this knowledge? What problem will it solve? What opportunities will it unlock? How will it tangibly improve your productivity, judgment, or impact? Anchoring your learning decision to a real problem, decision, or opportunity shifts your thinking.
- Second, optimise for application, not accumulation. Choose learning paths that force you to apply ideas quickly – case work, simulations, real projects, or conversations with practitioners. Knowledge that remains purely theoretical can easily be replaced by AI; knowledge that sharpens judgment cannot. This is why, for example, the ACIB route made more sense than the HCIB route for my current phase. It was about real-world application, not just credentials.
- Third, diversify your learning vehicles. Formal programs have their place, but so do podcasts, newsletters, peer learning circles, mentoring conversations, and curated online content. The best executives I know learn continuously, but rarely in just one format. During our end-of-year check-ins, as we reflected on how my team demonstrated our winning behaviour of Curiosity in 2025, one team member shared that she had built capability through a curated YouTube learning playlist. Another described developing a critical skill using a custom development plan created with ChatGPT, and I was genuinely excited. Sometimes, the knowledge you need isn’t in a program at all; it’s in someone’s head. Be humble enough to recognise it, and bold enough to go after it.
- Fourth (and my favourite), leverage knowledge to ask better questions. Your competitive advantage is not knowing more facts, but framing better questions, spotting second-order effects, and challenging assumptions in a way that moves decisions forward.
- Finally, share what you learn with intention. Learning compounds when it is tested in conversation, taught to others, or used to seed reflection. I have found that knowledge applied quietly but consistently often has more impact than knowledge loudly displayed. Sometimes I ask questions or make comments not to get a response immediately but to sow a seed. Later that day, or the next, I often receive calls saying, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” Egos drop. Defensiveness fades. Real problem-solving begins.
As we move on from the recently commemorated International Day of Education, it is worth ending with a difficult question. Are we prepared for a future where certificates are worth little more than the paper they are printed on?
In an AI-enabled world, the question is no longer “What certificate should I have?” It is “What capability do I need to build to be more useful, more effective, and more relevant?”
And that is the real work ahead of you.