We talk a lot about having a safe space for a retrospective, about creating that environment where it’s safe to open up and honestly talk about the real problems. We tell management that they should have no expectation of knowing about the specific conversations that went on inside a team’s retro, and that’s correct.
That doesn’t mean however, that management, or anyone else, can’t ask what improvements are coming out of the retrospectives. The whole point is to be improving and the team should be able to articulate how they are getting better, without being required to reveal how they got there, or what specific conversations happened.
It is completely reasonable to ask the team to demonstrate that they are improving, and in what ways. We can do that without violating the safety and privacy of the conversations themselves.