I have taken hundreds of references in my time in search. Senior commercial people, operations directors, programme leads. And I can count on one hand the number that told me anything the CV had not already claimed. Every referee was glowing. Every candidate was the best person the referee had ever worked with. If you took references at face value, the UK construction industry has never produced a mediocre leader.

Nobody believes that. So why do we keep running the ritual?

The problem is not that referees lie. Most people are honest, and the few who are not are more constrained by legal caution than they used to be. The problem is how we ask. A referee is chosen by the candidate, called by someone they will never meet, and asked questions so vague that a warm answer is the only polite option. "Would you rehire them?" "Were they reliable?" "Any concerns?" You are inviting a character reference from a handpicked witness and then filing it as due diligence.

I have watched businesses spend six figures on a search, run four interview rounds and a psychometric, and then wave the hire through on two phone calls that lasted eight minutes each. When the appointment goes wrong twelve months later, the reference file says everyone was delighted. Of course it does. It was designed to.

A reference is worth taking. It is just worth taking properly, and that means asking questions a polite referee cannot glide past. Ask where this person sits among every commercial lead the referee has worked with, and why. Ask what the candidate needed from them, because every senior hire needs propping up somewhere, and a referee who says "nothing" has stopped telling you the truth. Ask what the candidate's team would say about them after a bad month, not a good one. Ask what the next role should give them that the last one could not.

Then listen for the pauses. A referee's hesitation is more honest than their vocabulary. Nobody senior will tell you a candidate is poor, but almost everyone will go quiet in a specific place if you give them the room. The skill is not getting people to talk. It is noticing where they stop.

And do it by phone. A written reference is a press release. Email answers are drafted, softened and occasionally run past the candidate. Fifteen minutes of conversation with someone who actually sat across a boardroom table from your prospective director will tell you more than any signed letter on headed paper.

If you are hiring at senior level this autumn, look at your reference process and ask what it is actually for. If it exists to confirm a decision you have already made, save everyone the phone calls. If it exists to protect a six-figure appointment and the programme sitting behind it, treat it with the same rigour you apply to everything else in the deal. The information is there. You just have to ask questions that allow an honest person to give you an honest answer.