The proposal, which comes from two high-flying professors at Harvard Business School, includes the key change of having the 'transparency' committee devote most of its time to assessing the effectiveness of a business's performance indicators.

Writing in the Financial Times, professors Paul Healy and Krishna Palepu, say traditional audit committees are focused on a narrow set of responsibilities, do not meet often enough and generally do not have adequate financial knowledge.

The pair say committees should meet more and 'ensure that more committee members are financially literate'.