One day Nicholson will have to answer the only two questions that matter.

A lot of people over the years have asked me what I would do if fan media were ever allowed back inside Celtic, not to question the manager and not to question the players, but to question the people actually in charge of the club.

That would make returning worthwhile, and those are probably the only circumstances under which I would ever walk back into that room.

If we got the chance to ask the real decision-makers real questions instead of going through another charade, I would go.

And if I were sitting in front of Michael Nicholson with the opportunity to ask him anything and bring those answers back to you, I would only have two questions for him, because they are the only questions that really matter.

Every other question gives him room to waffle, dissemble and evade. These two don’t.

The first is: are you proud of yourself?

The second is: is this the best you can do?

The first question goes to the heart of who the man is. I know what he probably tells himself: that he is a Celtic man doing right by the club, that he cares passionately about Celtic and that he wants to act in its best interests.

Fine. But the reason I would ask him whether he is proud of himself is because he knows the real answer to that question better than anybody else.

He knows every compromise he has made to remain in that job. He knows every moment when he acted outside Celtic’s best interests fully aware that’s what he was doing. He knows every occasion when he failed to live up to those interests out of expediency, fear, loyalty to somebody above him or whatever other reason he gave himself at the time.

That is why the question matters.

Are you proud of yourself?

The second question is tied directly to the first. Is this the best you can do?

Because that goes to the heart of everything that has gone wrong. You can look at the things which have gone right and perhaps convince yourself that you deserve some credit, but when the failures are so numerous, so obvious and so large that everyone from the least perceptive person in the media to the most clued-up supporter can see them clearly, another question inevitably follows.

Why haven’t you fixed them?

See, I’m not interested in KPIs. I’m not interested in the statistical defences people in positions like his construct for themselves, and I’m not interested in whether he hits earnings targets or profit margins.

I’m interested in whether he looks at the state this team is in and the state this club is in, at all the places where things have gone wrong on his watch, and asks himself whether this is genuinely the best he is capable of.

I’m not asking whether he can live with it just comfortably enough to cash his pay cheque. I’m asking whether he can look out from the directors’ box on afternoons like yesterday and answer those two questions honestly.

Is he proud of himself?

And is this the best he can do?

Those questions are not about performance measured in some ledger somewhere. They are about the only ledger that ultimately matters: the internal one.

The one you carry around with you, where you know every grubby compromise you have made, every time you sold out, every time you considered the wellbeing of the institution itself and decided your own position mattered more.

I would ask those questions partly because I would want to hear his answers, but mostly because I would want to look him in the face while he gave them.

Maybe it is high time he looked in the mirror and asked himself the same thing.

Maybe it is time he asked himself at what point he became self-righteous enough to ignore the evidence of his own eyes, and selfish enough where loyalty to the people above him, and thus his own survival, become more important than loyalty to the institution itself.

Because power only works when people beneath it keep obeying. Every hierarchy depends on that, and every individual inside one eventually has to decide where his own responsibility begins.

There are people in every walk of life who eventually have to come to terms with the person they have become and the choices they have made.

Some have stood alongside terrible men and defended decisions they knew were morally wrong. Others have stood behind podiums and defended reckless decisions or repeated things they knew were untrue because that was what the job required.

If you’ve lied and spread disinformation for personal gain, you know what it is that you did.

If you’ve plotted and schemed and cheated your way up the corporate ladder, you know exactly what you are.

At some stage, people like that become immune to ordinary shame.

They stop caring what strangers think, stop caring what newspapers say, and build walls around themselves.

But none of that removes the private reckoning.

The one in the mirror.

The moment where you have to ask whether the person staring back is still the the you who you once thought you were.

You have to ask whether in the cold light of day all the lies and evasions are really constructed for other people … or to hide the truth from yourself?

“Am I still a good person?” What a loaded, terrible question that is.

Michael Nicholson may not care what you think of him. He may not care what I think of him. He may not care what supporters say or what people like me write.

But he is failing in the most fundamental responsibility attached to his position: his responsibility to Celtic.

And somewhere inside him, he has to know that.

He can hide behind high walls and locked doors. He can cocoon himself from criticism, keep the world outside and build those walls ever higher. He can remain invisible, as he has been for so much of his time in the job.

He can collect his money and watch this club stagnate, rot and begin to fracture because of decisions taken under his leadership.

But he cannot escape those two questions forever, and if this season ends with Derek McInnes standing there holding the league trophy, Michael Nicholson will still have to go home. He will still have to look in the mirror, and he will still have to ask himself whether he is proud of it and whether this is genuinely the best he could do.

There is no corporate answer to those questions. There is no KPI which makes them go away. There is no profit margin which makes those answers land one bit easier when you are being honest with yourself.

And there is no wall high enough to keep that verdict from mattering.

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