The only issue over which there was general agreement was that leadership development programmes can be evaluated - with 88% of employers agreeing or 'strongly agreeing' with this sentiment.
The survey, which was conducted in February found opinion was equally divided over whether or not organisations want the evaluation of leadership development programmes to measure their impact on business goals.
Opinion was again equally divided over the view that leadership development programmes are difficult to evaluate because their goals are rarely defined in precise terms. While 44% of respondents agreed with his view, 52% of the respondents did not.
Just over a third (35%) of respondents believe that relevant stakeholders aren't involved in planning the evaluation of leadership programmes; while a further ten per cent are 'unsure'.
Six out of 10 respondents said leadership development professionals would not feel threatened by an evaluation of how their programmes affect their organisation's business goals - whereas only 24% felt the opposite.
John O'Connor, performance improvement consultant at Ceres Management, said: "The results of this survey indicate that learning and development professionals seem to be unsure about the role of evaluation - even if most believe that it is possible to evaluate any development programme.
"They're also unsure about whether organisations even want to measure the value of development programmes in terms of their impact on a business' goals.
"Of course, this may be because current evaluation techniques make it difficult to achieve this measure. However, a new evaluation model - called Results Assessment (RA) - may help to modify these professionals' thinking.
"RA could help any learning and development professional who understands the importance of evaluation but who also realises that there's a gap between what s/he does and what s/he wants to do.
"If an organisation is not currently measuring impact outcomes, it needs to realise that evaluation is possible and easy to do, and it provides a more integrated approach to business planning.
"In their haste to please, L&D professionals can get carried away with what they're good at - that is, the design or the delivery systems - but can fail to link programme results with what the business wanted to achieve. Thinking in terms of 'solutions', we often overlook the need to align our development initiatives to business issues."