This article aims to provide insights into a series of events in a higher education institution and their impact on the workings of an action learning set in one academic school within the institution. In doing so, it examines the relationship between programmed knowledge, questioning and reflection, originally postulated by Revans and suggests that other factors (both affective and cultural) also contribute to--or in some cases detract from--learning at both personal and organizational levels. The implications for action learning practitioners are that in order to derive beneficial organizational learning from the use of action learning sets, it is crucial to ensure consistency between the rhetoric of senior managers and the emotional and political climate in the organization for which they are responsible. (Contains 1 table.)