Two contradictory schools of thought hold sway in the argument over the readiness of Australian boards to respond to digital transformation.
Directors of Australia's biggest companies and the advisory ecosystem that supports them take a generally positive, even relaxed view about the situation.
But talk to digital industry leaders with experience briefing particularly North American and European boards and the view is less flattering. 
And there is evidence to support this. Frost and Sullivan found Australian management to be the least advanced or even engaged in matters digital. Australian executives were the outliers in the study, presenting as among the least digitally active.
A more recent Frost and Sullivan study found only 2 per cent of Australian retailers believed they were offering poor customer experiences in a market that has shifted rapidly to digitally powered omnichannel. The retailers had no evidence for their views, just self-perception.
Gartner's research suggests local corporate leaders still view digital as primarily a technology exercise rather than a business transformation opportunity that needs to be led by the chief executive.
A big part of the problem, says Roger Sharp, chairman of Asia-Pacific digital specialist APD Group and a non-executive director of Webjet, is a lack of even basic technology capabilities at board level. Sharp is one of the few business leaders willing to speak out and use his own resources to define the scale of the problem.
"I gave a digital presentation to an ASX 200 board recently and none of the directors knew what the sharing economy [businesses such as Uber and Airbnb] was, which I found quite alarming."
That prompted Sharp to study the CVs of 800 directors of some of the top 20 companies in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.
"It is obviously subjective, but typically we would categorise a director as having level one technology expertise if they had even a year of TAFE equivalent education or some identifiable technology experience in their work."
The research revealed that only about 10 per cent of directors had any discernable technology capabilities.
Sharp says the challenge is that while companies can have experienced and highly qualified people with great business judgment and professional backgrounds in accounting or law, they often have no exposure to transformation in a digital world. "They have minimal situational awareness."
Still, he says he sees evidence of change and points to SEEK founder Paul Bassett joining the Wesfarmers board, and Westpac's appointment of Alison Dean, who he describes as a true digital native.
Robert Hillard, national managing partner consulting at Deloitte Australia, takes a positive view and says he sees a change in board attitudes.
However, he also cautions that company chairs are always being lobbied to add new capabilities to boards and that digital is just one more call on the board's time.
He acknowledges that in the retail and finance sectors Australian businesses are not world leaders.
"If you compare all of the local retail sector or all of our local financial services sector with the absolute best in the world then you will never find that the Australians are equal to the best in the world. But if you compare the average of Australian retail to the average of world retail then it's a whole lot more favourable."
"It's the same in financial services, although in financial services Australia is recognised in payments as having been pretty early movers."
The outlook is brighter in the mining, oil and gas industries, he says. "They were very early adopters of the internet of things and in those engineering-related areas Australian companies have been massive innovators."
But even here Hillard sees areas for improvement. "One of our fears is that boards have been too timid in looking for growth opportunities for their companies in areas where they have innovated. And a symptom of that is that there is not enough focus from boards on asking about intellectual property and what patents sit behind a company's success."
Hillard says companies in Australia generally do not file patents for their great technology and digital inventions if they are not core to the outcomes of the business, even where there are great spin-off opportunities.
One area of digital engagement where there is agreement that boards have successfully built their expertise is cybersecurity.
Anthony Stitt, general manager, security sales at tech giant Cisco, says cybersecurity is such an important consideration now that it has been operationalised by boards.
"They treat it as a BAU [business as usual] activity. There has been a shift in the dialogue between security operations and the board. These days it's more about, 'Do we have the right people, processes and mechanisms in place?"'
Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen has led the transformation of his business from an early leader in design software to a world leader in digital marketing.
It was a journey that started with a huge throw of the dice when the company acquired web-tagging and analytics business Omniture in 2009 for the then eye-watering price of $1.8 billion. Narayen, who was in Sydney recently for his company's Australian symposium, also sits on the board of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
"Every multi-year strategic business plan must include digital thinking. It's not an option to ignore it," he says.
"A great board is one that spends disproportionate amounts of time with management, taking active steps to understand the opportunities and challenges facing the business," he says.
"With the world increasingly moving to digital and businesses implementing digital strategies, boards also need to boost their digital capabilities to be better strategic advisers to the business."
Speaking of his own experience, he says: "Our digital transformation has been the foundation for growing our business, opening new doors to customer engagement and delivery, and also disrupting and leading many of the categories we operate in. Our board has been involved in our transformation strategy from day one and continues to be supportive."
There is not a C-suite in the world that is not thinking about digital transformation - re-platforming, improving the efficacy of marketing, all with the goal of executing a new vision that works across the organisation, he says.
"Ultimately, when you do the right thing for the customer everything falls into place. As an organisation we have to be clear why the digital transformation is going to be better for customers."